My counsel for you is
simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You
received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him.
You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your
way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit
studying the subject and start living it!
And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7 (TMSG)
I was attending a conference in the Florida
coastal panhandle city of Pensacola years ago, and took a short drive in the
afternoon around town to clear my head before the evening’s session with 3,000
preachers. (One MUST clear one’s head at
such times!)
Wandering through an older, run-down
part of the city, I stopped for a red light, and, while waiting for the light
to change I looked to one side of the street and took note of the vacant lot
with stone steps to nowhere! Evidently it
had been quite a few years since there’d been a home on that spot; the lot was
overgrown and starkly-bare amongst the other houses squeezed onto tiny yards.
But it was the lettering on the steps
to nowhere that caught my eye – a message in white paint, crafted by
someone this city block had perhaps long forgotten. Starting at the bottom, someone had
hand-lettered three words on the concrete blocks that were the steps to nowhere;
they read: Chappie’s First Steps.
I not only wondered all that
afternoon and evening about just who this fellow Chappie
is/was, I’ve been wondering about it for 25 years.
The possibilities are endless.
That now-vacant lot could have been a
young-Chappie’s first home…he actually bought or built a first set of steps to
his homestead.
Chappie could’ve been a toddler who
took his very first steps on that spot, and a proud parent just had to memorialize
the moment.
He could have been someone born with
legs that didn’t work, and then they did work through either a miracle of
surgery, or a miracle from another, higher Source. Like Jacob meeting God on the trail, he had
to pile some stones up to mark place of God.
He could have been someone who made a
remarkable turnaround from one of life’s awful choices – drugs, alcohol, family
abuse, financial ruin, jail – and this is where his life began again.
It could have been a new venture of
business or romance or a New Year’s resolution.
It could have been any of a myriad of
first steps.
I like to think it was all of these;
I love stories of success. Many of them
give the credit to a God who helps us turn from where we’ve been going –
towards something wholesome, worthy and important to venerate.
It is always the first step that begins
any journey. Chappie did something in
Pensacola. It felt like I was on “holy
ground” waiting in my car at that traffic light. Chappie decided, either as a toddler, or an
adult turn-arounder, that learning season was over and the “doing
season” had arrived…he took the first steps.
For You Today
What has God been teaching
you?
Are there some “first steps”
that have your name on them?
Could be an exciting
journey!
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