Are You Ready for What's Around the Corner?



The Great Smoky Mountains transform into rolling waves of color in Autumn. Often, the window of opportunity to photograph peak leaf color in a particular location might be rather short. However, since there is such a wide range of elevation you can find colorful displays for a solid month or more somewhere from the ridge lines to the valley floors.

Timing is everything whether your subject is a blooming wildflower, nursing black bear, fence-jumping deer, flowing waterfall or a vibrant leaf display. There is always something to shoot though, so a good photographer is always prepared for the expected and unexpected around the corner.

What about you? Are you ready for what's around the corner? No, I'm not talking about photography now. I'm talking about life. As much as we plan and prepare for tomorrow there is one thing that you can count on... the unexpected. You can save your money for decades just to have the stock market collapse. You can plan for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation right after retirement just to learn that you or your spouse has an untreatable cancer. Perhaps a natural disaster takes away everything you possess on earth, leaving you bankrupt, broken and alone. Or, maybe every plan comes to fruition as you hoped and dreamed.

Seasons of life come and go. Somehow we pick up and move on after terrible hurt or loss. Death is the only thing from which you cannot bounce back or recover. And someday you will spend eternity in either one of two places: heaven or hell. These are your only two choices, there are no alternatives or do-overs, and today is the day you ought to confirm in your heart, soul, mind and spirit just where your eternal home will be because this day or the next could bring the unexpected.

In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus said... "Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven."

Have you received Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Do you daily and authentically acknowledge Him as such before others by words and actions that are consistent with a life transformed by God?

When the chlorophyll (green) fades away from a leaf, its true colors are revealed underneath. What are your true colors? What hides just beneath the surface in you? Are you dull and lifeless without Christ or abundantly vibrant because of a new life given to you in Christ?

You might be able to fool others. You might even have yourself deceived into believing you are something or someone that you're not. But be sure of this... "God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." (Galatians 6:7)

Are you ready for what's around the corner?

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