Hurry up and wait!

Our flight to JFK leaves MSP at 6:45 tomorrow morning, June 27. At JFK, we will meet with our CLAL Stand and See Fellowship and board the flight headed for Israel.

Israel…just Wow!

I can hardly believe it. In fact, it still feels unreal to us. Waking up this morning, I felt a jolt – hurry, hurry, we can’t be late…we need to get our suitcases in the car and head out. But I caught my breath and remembered that we are o.k. We are on time. The taxi leaves for the airport hotel at noon. We have time for a cup of coffee and church. And so we paused.

We attended Pr. Kali Christensen’s service via Facebook Live – and that was my first gratitude prayer today – thank you, God, for the convenience of technology – as she read from the Gospel of Luke, I felt all sorts of disheveled. I handed Thomas his cup of joe and we listened intently, struggling to resist distraction. I looked around, the house in disarray having just moved things back to the farm, to the new parsonage, helping our daughter decide what to take and what to leave as she prepares to move to St. Paul…and I swallowed hard and tuned my head back into Pr. Kali reading from Luke (9:57) As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

We are leaving and we have only just begun. We watched our oldest son graduate just weeks ago, and this past week, we got him registered for his fall classes. We are leaving behind our home, our kids, our work. This is a big deal. We are leaving so many things undone…embarking on a journey that neither of us can really wrap our brains around…I am feeling some panic, anxiousness, fear of the unknown, and frankly, sheer exhaustion from what was one of the busiest weeks in ministry yet…we are leaving so much paused for now, so many things unfinished, and I gulped hard and for a moment, the people in the story from Luke today (9:51-62) resonated with me differently than ever before. After church, Thomas and I visited about what we heard from scripture and about Pr. Kali’s message – it’s something we often do after a good sermon. Thomas shared, “I am not saying that there are any parallels between us and them (the people in Luke’s story), I am just saying for the first time ever, while reading this particular story from Luke, I felt a pang of resonance like none I had ever felt before…”

9:61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

9:62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Again, not that we are noting some sort of huge significance between the journey Thomas and I are on and the people about to follow Jesus into Jerusalem, but certainly, as we continued to chat, as Thomas puts it, “we feel echos” – Jesus was going on a journey and we are about to embark on a journey that will bring us where Jesus actually walked. We both agreed there are not parallels here; we did stop and take time to hug our kids and say goodbye, visit my mom and dad and call our daughter to say our farewells. But, we are getting closer now to the public ministry of Jesus than we have ever been, at least physically, so it is hard not to at least feel the echos from these passages today…”hand to the plow”…

Today has been filled with many emotions for both Thomas and I – feeling the intensity to hurry, and yet, resisting the strong desire to stay put – stay here, hold our kids, plant our feet, do our work, minister to our communities…

As we packed the final bottle of sunscreen, hugged our kids goodbye, bringing Sawyer to Grandma and Grandpa’s for breakfast, calling to confirm taxi service…so much doing and going and planning and waiting and pausing and stopping and packing… as we arrived at my parents, my dad looked surprised to see us because he figured we had already left, but I informed him we could not leave without mom’s famous breakfast (break fast) bars – all that oatmeal and chocolate wrapped up in a powerful bar – music in my mouth! All these things feel so normal and yet here we are, getting ready to go to Israel, a place we have only read about from the greatest history book ever written…the stories from scripture we have been taught all of our lives – real places – Jerusalem and Samaria are on a real map…and Jesus lived and taught in these places…can we walk in the same place Hercules walked? Nope. But we are going to walk in Jerusalem where Jesus walked with his disciples. Can we visit Mount Olympus? Nope, but we be visiting the Mount of Olives. This is real. This is a big deal. And just like the scripture came alive to Thomas and I in a new way today, it’s going to keep happening over and over to us on this journey – a journey by foot but also by heart… Galatians 5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Amen.