On the Way:
Connect the Dots!
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Early in my days as pastor of First Baptist Church, Shreveport, I had a memorable luncheon conversation with Bryan, a young adult leader of the church. He said something like this: “I’m a very simple, down-to-earth person. Sometimes the big ideas of scripture go right over my head. When you preach and teach, I need you to ‘connect the dots’; that is, I need you to get very practical. Help me understand how to apply what the Bible says to my weekday life.”
I was thinking about his request this morning as I reflected back to my message this past Sunday. We looked at Isaiah’s encounter with God in the temple and God’s question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Is. 6:1-8) This is a “big-idea” Bible story that, unless we’re intentionally about it, can take us off on flights of grandiose conversation about saving the world that have no real connection to our everyday existence. So let’s consider just how down-to-earth God’s callings really are. To make the point, let me share a memory.
Back in the 90’s, while pastoring Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, I attended a national conference that used the Isaiah 6 passage as its theme text. We were inspired to participate in God’s global-good-news agenda through prayer, giving, and going. I was tired but still floating on clouds noble aspiration when my plane landed back in KC. My welcome when I got back home brought me back to earth. One of the kids had gotten sick that day and come home early from school. The other one was in borderline panic mode because of a big project due the next day. Priscilla was juggling the kids’ needs while getting dinner together. She greeted me with a hug and these words: “Boy, am I glad to see you! I could use some help!”
Here’s what struck me in that moment: Priscilla was being as missional as the speaker I had heard at the conference talking about her organization’s inner-city ministry in Detroit. Priscilla was right where God wanted her to be, fully invested in the very unromantic particulars of her parental and marital callings. And that, it also struck me, was exactly where I needed to be too.
When God asks the question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he’s as interested in our being his conduit of love and justice right down in the trenches of our everyday lives as he is in our going off on great adventures in the city and around the globe. All of it matters. The key is to live life with a sense of calling, remembering to listen and respond to the missional tugs at work, home, and school as well as we do to the callings that draw us out on cross-cultural adventures for the sake of Christ.
Connect the Dots!
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Early in my days as pastor of First Baptist Church, Shreveport, I had a memorable luncheon conversation with Bryan, a young adult leader of the church. He said something like this: “I’m a very simple, down-to-earth person. Sometimes the big ideas of scripture go right over my head. When you preach and teach, I need you to ‘connect the dots’; that is, I need you to get very practical. Help me understand how to apply what the Bible says to my weekday life.”
I was thinking about his request this morning as I reflected back to my message this past Sunday. We looked at Isaiah’s encounter with God in the temple and God’s question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Is. 6:1-8) This is a “big-idea” Bible story that, unless we’re intentionally about it, can take us off on flights of grandiose conversation about saving the world that have no real connection to our everyday existence. So let’s consider just how down-to-earth God’s callings really are. To make the point, let me share a memory.
Back in the 90’s, while pastoring Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, I attended a national conference that used the Isaiah 6 passage as its theme text. We were inspired to participate in God’s global-good-news agenda through prayer, giving, and going. I was tired but still floating on clouds noble aspiration when my plane landed back in KC. My welcome when I got back home brought me back to earth. One of the kids had gotten sick that day and come home early from school. The other one was in borderline panic mode because of a big project due the next day. Priscilla was juggling the kids’ needs while getting dinner together. She greeted me with a hug and these words: “Boy, am I glad to see you! I could use some help!”
Here’s what struck me in that moment: Priscilla was being as missional as the speaker I had heard at the conference talking about her organization’s inner-city ministry in Detroit. Priscilla was right where God wanted her to be, fully invested in the very unromantic particulars of her parental and marital callings. And that, it also struck me, was exactly where I needed to be too.
When God asks the question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he’s as interested in our being his conduit of love and justice right down in the trenches of our everyday lives as he is in our going off on great adventures in the city and around the globe. All of it matters. The key is to live life with a sense of calling, remembering to listen and respond to the missional tugs at work, home, and school as well as we do to the callings that draw us out on cross-cultural adventures for the sake of Christ.