By Mick Richards

What if the most important window in front of us is one we keep assuming will stay open?

Not something distant. Not something abstract. Something much closer than we tend to realize. 

In missions, when we think about windows, we usually think in terms of geography. The 10/40 Window is one of the most well-known frameworks, a way of identifying where the greatest need exists across the world.

But what if the most significant window in front of us isn’t defined by location at all? What if it’s something we move through every day without really seeing it?

A Subtle Drift We Don’t Notice

In Luke 16, Jesus tells the story of a steward who had been entrusted with responsibility but had slowly drifted. There’s no dramatic collapse in the story. It reads more like something gradual. What he had been given wasn’t handled with care, priorities slipped, and things were neglected over time.

It feels familiar, not in obvious failure, but in subtle drift.

Then everything changes in a single moment. He hears that he can no longer be manager, and suddenly what had been easy to ignore becomes impossible to avoid. Whatever he still has access to is temporary, and whatever he does next carries weight beyond the moment he’s in.

When Awareness Changes Everything

What stands out is not that he becomes a different person. It’s that he becomes aware.

He sees clearly, and that clarity changes how he moves. He begins to act with urgency, with intention, and with a level of strategy that wasn’t there before. He looks at what is still in his hands—his relationships, his access, his remaining influence—and he uses all of it with purpose, knowing that what remains will shape what comes next.

And this is the part that’s easy to miss.

It wasn’t what was taken from him that changed him. It was what he realized he still had left.

The Window That Doesn’t Stay Open

And Jesus says that response is commendable. Not the dishonesty, but the awareness, the urgency, and the way he used everything still available to him to prepare for what was ahead. He points out that people who are focused on this world often act with more clarity about their future than those who claim to be living with eternity in mind.

That should stop us.

Because if we’re honest, we recognize the same pattern in ourselves. Most of us aren’t intentionally wasting what we’ve been given, but we’re also not living with a clear awareness of what we’re actually working with. There’s an assumption, even if we don’t say it out loud, that there will always be more space to do what we already know matters.

So we delay.

And over time, delay becomes a pattern.

That’s where the story turns. The window in that story wasn’t about what the steward had at the beginning. It was about what he still had left, and whether he would recognize it in time to use it.

Seeing What Is Still in Front of Us

And if we’re honest, we’ve all had moments where that reality surfaces—moments where something in us recognizes that what we have right now isn’t as open-ended as we’ve been treating it, that certain opportunities won’t always be there, and that what’s in front of us carries more weight than we’ve been giving it.

But those moments don’t stay.

We move past them, return to normal, and go back to assuming there’s more time than there actually is.

And that’s the problem.

Because nothing about the steward’s situation improved. He didn’t gain anything new.

What changed was his awareness of what remained.

And that awareness changed everything.

Which means the real issue isn’t what we’ve been given. It’s whether we see it clearly, because once we do, we don’t just think differently—we move differently.

That’s why Jesus calls it commendable. Not because the steward became better overnight, but because he finally recognized what was in front of him and used it.

So what is the window that’s in front of us?

And are we living as if it’s actually open… or as if it will always be there when we’re ready?

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About the Author

Mick Richards is a media missionary and founder of MissionWake, focused on telling real stories that lead to real-world impact.

For more information, visit: mickrichards.com