From Magpies... 4th Installment, Magpies
May 18, 2009
Perfectionist Travelers and the Original Hand of God
Something happens when we begin to grow up. We can become critical of the things that we loved as children. It seems as if our grown up world wants to set the childhood fantasy straight. Have you ever gone back to a childhood home and discovered that your room, which you had always believed to be cavernous, was tiny. Maybe you discovered that the forest you played in was a clump of pine trees by the garage. Perhaps the cliff you sledded down at risk to life was a little more than a drainage ditch. As we grow up we are bound to face a little, well, disappointment with what we believed. The criticism follows the dissolving of our perfect fantasy.
Perhaps this spirit comes from our desiring something more. Maybe the actual experience is different than our expectations. Perhaps we begin to feel entitled to something bigger. It is possible to become bitter when our vision asks more than our early mentors or memories fail to deliver the “more”. It is like a person sitting beside the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with all of its architectural magnificence, who complains that the bathroom facilities are not adequate. We tend to want it all, the way we see it, when we want it, for a reasonable price. Ministry planting doesn’t ever work that way.
Romance may get us to make the move, passion will ignite the change, but it will be true love and “calling” that allow us to endure through the process. Criticism can be a symptom of a romance without love. There are moments, however, when God is writing that bigger story for us. Brief intervals of the completed fantasy which prove to us that the road we are on is the road we will stay on.
So there I was, waiting for the first ever outreach at Crossroads Farm. We had planned a Murder Mystery where students would run through the crudely cut paths over 105 acres and collect ten clues. It may have been the worlds’ largest “Clue” game. We had a volunteer staff of four people and professional staff of four. Volunteers had been recruited from across the county. Everyone from neighbors who were to hand out donuts to a circuit court judge who was parking cars was there. None of us knew what to expect. God did. It is why he wanted us to come here to Hillsdale County.
I walked into the house at a minute after 6:00 p.m. in order to get a drink. My staff had been duly alerted that it did not matter if only twenty five students showed up this evening, we were going to enjoy what God was doing. We had prayed and asked that God bless our intentions and our efforts. One of my staff guys was still trying to finish a few trails through a corn field by driving our ATV through it. We were truly winging this one.
I stepped onto the porch of the director’s home ten minutes later and could not believe my eyes. Although the event was not scheduled to begin until 7:00 (and being from the suburbs we had expected that to mean 7:17), now, with fifty minutes to go there were cars down the lane and onto the road. The cars were backed up ten long in both directions for the next twenty minutes while we parked cars, collected money and made change.
In all, the very first night of formal ministry began with over 220 students. I had only two thoughts. “Praise God!” and “We are going to need to get more donuts”.
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