Friday (day off) was spent running all over town getting things ready for the fish fry Saturday at the church, preceded by passing out just under a thousand door hangers in the community for Easter, followed by two services, a rehearsal, and a seminar Sunday morning, and finished off with redesigning the worship center and hosting a women's event for just under a hundred ladies... exhaustion. It begs the question, "WHY?!" The cool thing for me is, there is a really good answer.
The first part of that answer came around when I was just a boy. I'll never forget sitting in my fifth grade classroom as the teacher assigned a one page essay on the subject, "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up". Immediately, I began to daydream about dressing out in buckskin, and venturing off to begin my life as a mountain man! Yes, my head and my heart were filled with dreams of hunting and fishing and living off the land. But in those moments, the Holy Spirit spoke three words to me which changed my life, "Preach the Gospel". I remember it like it was yesterday, and after a weekend like this one was, it feels good to have lived out the mandate of those words.
The second part of the answer sleeps next to me at night. Penny & I fell in love working to proclaim the Gospel of Christ together. Each time we come to a weekend like this, its like the clock rolls back and we fall in love all over again. Over the weekend, as we ran at break-neck speed, we looked at each other with quirky little smiles as the wrinkles and the grey (all on me, of course) fell away. We told our kids the stories of our love and life and how we met and fell in love; and in those moments, exhaustion was cured by simple happiness.
The Gospel proclaimed, sung about, prayed over, and deep fried with the catfish, now I can be exhausted. I hate hitting the wall, but the race to exhaustion is on the pathway to success, to the fulfillment of an old command, and the privilege of a timeless love.
By tomorrow I'll be rarin' to go again, and its a good thing, because in just a few days we celebrate Easter... from Thursday to Sunday its almost non-stop action; and why would you want it any other way!
As I look in the mirror I notice that most of my wrinkles are smile lines, and that almost every grey hair in my beard has the story of a good battle behind it... and I think, "What more could I ask for?"
Pax Christi!
John
It's still an honor to serve with you - after 10 years and for 100 more!
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