Parents, What Are You Going To Be When You Grow Up?* Words From COVID19 quarantine

 Parents, What are you going to be when you grow up? My great-grand-mother was quite a character. She was witty and sharp and could even be caustic when she spoke the “truth in love,” She knew the scriptures, was a card shark, loved to tell a slightly off color joke, and was a strong opinionated woman who had survived the Great Depression, World Wars and much hardship. Maude, or “Mau Mau” as I knew her, had lived her life with her husband Will, who was a professional tailor in his shop in Arkansas, until she moved to live with my grandmother, known as “Mother Mac” in my hometown. She would sometimes babysit my sister, my cousins and me. She didn’t put up with a lot, but loved us as her generation knew how to show love. She spoke the truth of scriptures she had memorized at just the right time. She could tease us harshly and just laugh out loud, but no one else dared mess with anyone in her family… she would defend them, even if she knew they were wrong. One day in the apartment building with the swimming pool on top, she was keeping the 4 Knoxville great-grands and we were discussing what we were going to be when we grew up… all the standard responses: policeman, nurse (popular in my family), doctor (there were a couple of those in the family too). I responded with, “I want to be a ‘rootin’ tootin’ cowboy.’” I had seen one on the Sesame Street skit a couple of times, dressed like a dude with six shooters, chaps, boots, and spurs. (My family now tells me I at least got the tootin’ part right… I tell them, “that’s not funny, but pull my finger.”) I then changed my mind, as kids do, and said I wanted to be a fireman. Mau Mau looked straight at me and said, “No, you are going to be a pastor!” I thought, how boring! I became angry and told her, “No, I am going to be a fireman.” Little did I know that God had given her some insights that would come to fruition many years later. She didn’t live long enough to know that I had become a pastor, but she was so sure of it, she saw it and “prophesied” it, called me out and up to it when I was just a child. I did my best to run from it, deny it, and rebel both then and as a young man, but God hunted me down, changed my heart, sent me to seminary, called me to churches to serve. He has blessed me with many brothers and sisters in Christ whom I love very much. I may be boring, but my life as a pastor has not been boring. I have had the great privilege of seeing God at work in the lives of many people, rescuing many from the fires of hell... my aunt reminds me that maybe I am a fireman of sorts…

We are all firemen/women! When God rescues us and we connect our lives with God, we take on the family business. The business of being on the rescue team for others. We may be asked to run into the darkness of a burning building of someone’s life to bring them out, breathe life into them, help gently heal their wounds, and welcome them to God’s family. We may also be asked to speak the Truth into the lives of God’s people and call them up and call them out into God’s ministry whether vocationally or as a lay person. Peter, the one who had warmed himself by the fire and denied Christ while He was on trial, but whom Jesus had later restored and told him “care for My sheep,” reminds us: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 (CSB) I’m thankful for Mau Mau, that she was a part of the rescue team for this little boy. As she shared scripture and shared encouragement, showed love with her words in the best way she could. She foretold of a ministry that I don’t deserve, but am privileged to share. Whatever your calling, you are a minister, a priest(ess) called to love and rescue others.

Hang in there people. God is glad to be with us. I’m praying for us all.