Let me give you a personal example.

Right now I’m on a position I’ll hold for over a month. I’m blessed, in a strange way, to patrol landscape this beautiful and breathtaking. But throw back a year, when I’d finish a late night shift at Asda, a supermarket chain in England, I’d arrive at my house, park, shut the door, and the cold night air would hit me and stop me dead in my tracks.

I’d look up. The stars. Absolutely breathtaking.

I’d walk to the front porch, and just before putting the key in the door, I’d turn around, lean on the fence, and take a deep breath. Just to take it all in.

I dare you to do it too. Tonight, before bed, look up at the sky. Look at God’s creation. You’ll feel it, that sense of vertigo, that sudden awareness of how small you actually are against all of it.

That’s not meant to frighten you. It’s meant to remind you. Don’t carry your problems like they’re the end of the world. They aren’t. Look up. Be in awe.

I make the Sign of the Cross before each patrol, a leap of faith, everything placed in the hands of the Almighty. Is this the patrol God destined to be my last? I don’t know. Nobody does.

What I do know is this: I step out wondering whether I deserve the day He’s given me. I am a wretched sinner and I know what I am before God. And yet here I stand, rifle in hand, asking Him to bring me home every single time, and you know what, He does.

That itself is the answer. Survival is not luck. It is not chance. Every morning God allows you to open your eyes is an act of mercy, and every act of mercy carries within it a calling. He is keeping you alive for a reason. No matter how far you’ve gone down the road of unrighteousness, no matter how far you think you’ve fallen, if God keeps you alive every single day, then you still have a destiny He wants you to fulfil. He has not finished with you yet.

Whatever that may look like.