I still remember when QR codes first showed up. Those small black-and-white squares would appear on a poster or a magazine ad, and almost nobody bothered to scan them. You needed a special app just to read one, and most people did not have it or did not know why they would want it. The code sat there, printed and waiting, doing nothing.
That little square was not new technology by the time most of us noticed it. It had been invented back in 1994 by a Japanese engineer who needed a faster way to track auto parts on a factory floor. For years afterward, QR codes mostly lived in warehouses and shipping labels, far from everyday life. A few companies tried to bring them into advertising in the 2000s, but the effort mostly fizzled. The tool was ready, but the timing was wrong.
Then came 2020, the year COVID changed the world. Suddenly every restaurant needed a touchless menu. Every business needed a touchless check-in. Every one of us needed a way to do ordinary things without passing germs back and forth through a shared surface. And there it was, that same small square, ready to be scanned by a phone camera that, as it happened, had quietly gained the ability to read QR codes a few years before anyone knew they would need to. What had sat idle for two decades became, almost overnight, one of the most used pieces of technology in daily life.
Prepared Long Before the Purpose Is Clear
Scripture gives us a striking picture of this same pattern in the book of Esther. Mordecai says to Esther, who has been placed in the king’s palace through a long and unlikely chain of events:
“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)
Esther did not become queen because she was preparing to save her people. She became queen years before she understood why. Her position, her access, her very presence in that palace, sat quietly in place until the moment arrived that needed exactly what she had. Nothing about the years before that moment looked like preparation for a rescue. It just looked like life. Only in hindsight did the reason she was there become clear.
Sometimes we find ourselves in that gap between being equipped for something and being called on. Maybe it is a skill you learned that has not yet found its purpose. Maybe it is a season of pain you walked through that taught you things no comfortable season ever could. Maybe it is a relationship you built for reasons that had nothing to do with what that relationship would eventually mean. None of it looked significant while it was happening.
The Barrier Is Often Capability, Not Value
Here is what strikes me most about the QR code story. Those codes did not fail to catch on for ten years because they were poorly made or because nobody needed what they offered. They failed to catch on because most people lacked a simple way to access them. The value was there the entire time. What was missing was the means to receive it.
I think the Gospel often meets people the same way. The truth of who Christ is and what He has done does not change based on whether a person is ready to receive it. It sits there, complete and sufficient, waiting. And then something shifts, a crisis, a loss, a quiet exhaustion with carrying life alone, and a person finally has what they need to receive what was always being offered. The Gospel was not more true the day they believed it than it was the day before. They were simply, finally, able to see it.
The same can be true for those of us who already believe. How many truths from God’s Word have we read a hundred times without really catching them, until a hard time finally gave us the capacity to receive what had been true all along?
What This Means for the Waiting
If you are in a season where your preparation feels wasted, where the thing you have learned or endured or built does not yet seem to serve any purpose, I want to offer you the same question Mordecai offered Esther. Who knows whether you have not come to this place, this skill, this scar, for such a time as this?
You do not have to understand the purpose of your preparation before God puts it to use. Esther did not. She simply remained faithful in the position she had been given, one day at a time, until the day came that she was needed. Living faithfully does not mean that we see the whole plan, but that we stay ready inside the part we have been given.
John W. Crowder is the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church West in West, Texas, and the author of Anchor Point: How to Lead with Faith, Find Strength, and Rebuild with Hope After Crisis (available on Amazon). This post appears on his blog, View from the Vine. If it encouraged you, consider subscribing for more reflections on faith, ministry, and rebuilding after crisis.
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