We’ve all had that moment when the rescue, the help, or the way out came just in time.

Back in my college days, I went caving (spelunking) with some friends.  We climbed, mostly on our bellies, deep down into the recesses of a cave to finally reach the open caverns we had been hoping to see.  Most of the trek took us down, deeper, into the earth.

Unbeknownst to us, it had started raining heavily outside, above the earth where we explored.  If there’s one thing you don’t want to be, it’s a caver during a torrential downpour.  As we were exploring the wonders of the cave,  we heard a distant rumbling sound.  If you’ve ever been deep into one of these kinds of caves, you know that it’s completely silent except for the occasional drip of moisture from the cave ceiling to the floor.  Just as we were picking up the pace to turn around and get out, a wall of water gushed through the narrow passage in which we were climbing.  If we didn’t get out of this passageway soon, the rising water level would overtake us and we would drown.

Obviously, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now, we managed to get out just in time.

In 4 days we leave for Africa as a family.  We will be three weeks in South Africa volunteering with Ten Thousand Homes and three weeks in the Congo working at 2 different youth camps.  We’ve been saving for this self-funded trip.  In addition, we were planning to use the profit gained on the house we renovated and put on the market to help us fund the trip.  Things were looking good for that to happen when already last December we had a buyer.  Failure on my part to realize that the home was considered to be in a flood plain (minor detail) caused that buyer to walk away.  The next buyer had a nervous breakdown and had to be excused from  the contract. (In the meantime, we had secured the correct documentation to have the house removed from the flood plain).

Our third buyer stuck and we just had closing yesterday, 5 days before our departure, freeing up the money we had tied into the house, plus a bit of profit to help with the trip.

I was beginning to wonder what we were going to do if the house didn’t sell in time for our trip.  We are taking this trip because we’ve had a sense of God’s leading in this.  This is something that we are to do as a family that I believe will help bring much growth and a deeper sense of connection to God’s purpose for each one of us. And hopefully we will also be able to be a blessing and encouragement to others along the way.

It often seems  that when we step out to follow God’s leading in our lives, there’s predictably this moment when we wonder, “what now?“, or “how is this going to work out?” As we wrestle with these questions, it’s an opportunity to grow.  Can I trust that God is really leading us, and thus will provide for us?  These are opportunities for growing in my ability to trust God.

And often, it seems like the answer comes just in time.  I’ve had enough of these experiences in my life now to recognize what I call the just in time principle.  God does come through one way or another, even if it’s the last minute.  In the meantime, my trusting muscles got expanded.  Again.