Three weeks from yesterday! That's the official count till M-DAY.  As most of you know my Battalion's mobilization send off will be Monday August 9th 10am at Vet's Auditorium in downtown Des Moines.

The time is getting closer - the reality of the next year is dawning and yet . . . what about the next three weeks.  Am I just to 'get through' them till I enter the next phase? Or is there something that God desires I learn, I do while I wait. The song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller comes to mind.  Part of the lyrics state "While I'm waiting - I will serve You - While I'm waiting - I will worship - While I'm waiting - I will not faint - I'll be running the race - Even while I wait"

So often we live in the future that we miss what God is doing in the present - we miss the opportunities or the encounters He desires us to have because we just want to get to the next step.  I think of the passage in Matthew's gospel where Jesus is preaching what's become known as the Sermon on the Mount.  It said Jesus saw the crowds so He went up the mountainside where His disciples came to Him and that is when the discourse of teaching begins.  In the middle of the teaching He talks about our mindset - what we are focusing on and how we so easily get distracted by the world that we miss His presence.  Yet not only His presence but the riches He desires us to have.  We spin our wheels while all the time all God desires us to seek Him and allow Him to be at work.

Matthew 6:19-20;24-25;32-33

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? . . .For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

So instead of being anxious and worrying about what my time at Camp Shelby will be like - instead of looking to when we will actually get into Afghanistan.  I need to focus on what He is calling me to do & to be right now - today - in this moment.  Yet how hard that is to do!!