Take heart. Drum up your courage. Be bold. Throw caution to the wind. Go for it. When action is required, I don’t want to be found wanting. Worse, I don’t want to be thought cowardly. I want to be one who summons the courage necessary.

What if my “wrestling is not so much to summon courage but to remove the hindrances to its functioning?” (Robert Corin Morris, from Weavings, issue xxvii, number 4) What if it “burns quietly within us, like the pilot light of a furnace ready to blaze forth when needed.”

I see this in the eyes of our Olympic gymnasts. By the wonder of modern camera technology, the close ups of their faces are astounding. You can see the fiery furnace. The pent up power. The barely contained fury. They don’t look afraid; they look ready. Ready to explode. Their battle – to control that explosion. To release it in packets of energy  – a twist, a turn, a spring, a landing.

What if I don’t have to drum up my own courage? What if it is there already? What if all that is needed is for me to open the gate and release what’s holding it back? To believe in my preparation and the One who prepared me.

What might I see if I exploded through that gate? What might He show me?

It’s a cool image, and very good physiology. Sounds very much like the way God would design things – to have all the ingredients prepared, just waiting for the right moment to release them. To explode their potential into existence. Like, say, the “God particle.” But, by His perfect patience, He allowed our hand (so to speak) to command the trigger.

How might I live today differently if I believed that all He intended was already in place ready to be released in perfect packets of power – by me?