Joshua 24; Looking back

Looking back, Joshua traced of God's work among his people. It was faith building and challenging. If I did the same, it might sound like this.

Generations ago my ancestors were led to pursue God. A great-grandfather I never knew raised his family as part of a new religious movement called the Stone-Campbell movement. His son Mack was upstanding and gentle. God placed a song in his heart which he always sang or whistled. His daughter met and married a man who was quite head-strong but who would eventually become part of the same movement. Though he struggled with bringing some aspects of his life into submission before God, he raised his children to seek the Lord. As a teenager I pleaded with the Lord for two things, i.e., to find a good wife and to find a congregation that lived out New Testament discipleship. In answer to this, I was admitted to veterinary school earlier than anticipated; my roommates led me to a congregation that focused upon the discipleship of university students. There I met and married Frances, the greatest blessing of my life. As a veterinarian, God birthed a restlessness inside me that eventually led me to language school in Costa Rica, religious studies in Memphis and church planting in Venezuela. When the local church was mature and needed the opportunity for local leaders to rise up, he led me to Abilene Christian University to continue to live out the implications of the missional restlessness that he gave me as a younger man. Now I spend my days serving in an institution that I did not build and raising four wonderful children. My time is dedicated to passing on missional restlessness to a new generation with the hope that they will seek God and be the answer to someone else's prayers.

Mark 14:12-26; Family Meal

There is so much to think about in this section that I have a hard time keeping one train of thought. The richness of the Jewish tradition, the breadth of behind-the-scenes emotions and the cryptic Old Testament allusions all draw me in. Yet, during this reading, it was simply the question of the disciples that prevailed in my mind. “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

The Passover was a family meal shared in the home. The question of the disciples brings up the necessary inference of ". . . because we are all homeless." Jesus was traveling with a small group that had indeed become his family. They had no plot of land to call home but they had each other to call brother and sister. It was with these that Jesus chose to share his most significant meal.

I hold strongly to old ideas of family. My wife, children and I eat together daily, spend holidays together, travel together, etc. Yet living far away from extended family has taught me that family can be more than blood relations.

So I ask myself with whom would I share my last meal on earth? What twelve people would I ask to spend special time with me? Who has become my family in my journey here? How have I treated them? How have I influenced them? Do they know they are significant to me?