Showing up when you don’t want to often ends up being a time when you discover there is something God wants to show you.
Here’s an example. When Barack Obama was first running for president he made a promise to visit Greenwood, South Carolina, the hometown of an influential legislator. Obama writes, “As it turned out, my visit was poorly timed, coming during an especially rough week, amid bad poll numbers, bad stories in the papers, bad moods, and bad sleep. It didn’t help that Greenwood was more than an hour from the nearest major airport, we were driving through torrential rains, and when I finally arrived at the municipal building where the event was supposed to be held, I found only twenty people or so gathered inside—all of them as damp as I was from the storm.”
But because Obama showed up he met a woman who gave him a trademark phrase he’d use in future campaign speeches.
“A wasted day, I thought to myself… I was going through the motions, shaking hands, asking people what they did for a living, quietly trying to calculate how fast I could get out of there, when suddenly I heard a piercing voice shout out. ‘Fired up!’ My staff and I were startled, thinking maybe it was a heckler, but without missing a beat, the rest of the room responded in unison. ‘Ready to go!’ Again, the same voice shouted, ‘Fired up!’ And once again the group responded, ‘Ready to go!’
Unsure of what was happening, I turned to look behind me, my eyes landing on the source of the commotion: a middle-aged Black woman, dressed like she had just come from church, with a colorful dress, a big hat, and an ear-to-ear grin that included a shiny gold tooth. Her name was Edith Childs.”
Edith was known in Greenwood for using this call and response in local sporting events and gatherings and Obama describes how after saying those words a few times he became excited to give his speech and went on to use it throughout his campaign.
Showing up when you don’t want to often ends up being a time when you discover there is something God wants to show you.
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