Day 7 - Thirty Six Days

Do you remember being chosen?  That might be the greatest experience we ever know.  I wonder if it happens to us nearly often enough.  It happens when we are ‘making friends.’  We meet people and share a moment, a conversation, or an event.  We may give some indications that we hope to meet again, talk again, or share a meal together.  We then wait for a response.  We are hoping to be chosen.

 

I met Stephen in graduate school.  He was preaching for a church in Wichita Falls, TX and I was working with a small church in the Rio Grande Valley.  We recognized in each other a kindred spirit.  The class was an Old Testament course on the Pentateuch taught by Dr. David Wallace. Stephen was interested in reading my work.  In graduate education, that is always a very friendly gesture!  When a preaching position came available in Wichita Falls in the summer of ’96, Stephen encouraged me to apply.  He said, “There is no one like me here.  I need a theological friend!”  I got the job (as I recall I was their unanimous ‘second’ choice for the job!) and Stephen and his family and me and my family began a new level of friendship.  Stephen and I met every week for half a Schlotsky’s and some church talk.

 

He invited me into a small group.  We read a book by Elisabeth O’Connor entitled Called to Commitment.  That small group has been a circle of friends for a decade.  We vacation together with the Wagners, the Heyens, the Burnams, and the Johnsons.  Last November I traveled with Dr and Mrs Wagner to Gettysburg for a Lincoln Forum.  We are curious together and I think that is wonderful.

 

What I feel from this group is adoption.  We have been chosen to share their lives.  We love them.  They know us.  We have become family.  They love our children.  We love their children.  It all began in a moment, in a classroom, in a conversation.

 

This is an enactment of the drama of your relationship with God.  You are wanted.  God wants to read your work.  God wonders if you will respond to an invitation to relationship.  God has already decided that you are worth knowing.  God has already decided that he loves your children, and wonders if you might love ‘his’ children.  God would like to meet you at Schlotsky’s on Tuesday for lunch to share a sandwich and to talk about your work.

 

It is adoption that really interests ‘him.’  “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry, “Abba!  Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, - if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:15-17).

 

You have been chosen.  You are wanted.  And we turn around and are involved in that work, too.  We are to be making friends, changing the world.  That is important work.