Friday,
January 3, 2020
“But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son,
go out and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘No,
I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. Then
the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go. “Which of the two obeyed his father?” They replied, “The first.” Matthew 21:28-31a
Mom never lost the missionary
fire within; she was a shining light quietly inspiring and changing
lives. The first life she impacted was
Elwood (Slim) Brownworth. She wouldn’t
go to the movies with him unless he agreed to come to church with her. That started a different kind of fire, and it
lasted 67 years.
Mom served our Lord in the church we
attended in those early years, as Sunday School superintendent, leading
Vacation Bible School, and attending to many other details of church life. But the missionary-in-residence
of our humble 4-room cottage most lived-out her commitment to Christ in the
day-to-day routines of the faithful life of a Jesus disciple
right in front of her two children. That
visible testimony of the grace of God had the effect that it always has; two
different lives impacted to travel two different roads, with one destination.
My brother, Thom, four years older than I,
went off to Houghton College when I was a freshman in high school. Thom was the first college student in our
family. His plan was for ministry
studies, but the financial burden of college costs was too heavy, and the
scholarship from the State of NY could only be used for non-ministry
purposes. So, the math major was born,
and my big brother graduated with honors.
This pathway started a different kind of ministry than Thom had
imagined. In the classroom at Stony
Brook School he would teach math to students, but the ministry became modeling
faithful Christian discipleship for his children, grandchildren, students and
peers. That lasted more than five
decades. It wasn’t the road he’d
planned, but God leads the way we can serve Him best.
Eventually, God’s Spirit
finally got through to the more hard-headed of the brothers, whose wandering
gave way to a re-call into commitment of life; this led to a different kind of
wandering – 40 years of itinerancy – like Abraham, following God far from home
and family.
This time, however, there was no scholarship hanging
in the balance; this was a long-delayed dream-following which would culminate a
month ago in being commissioned as a deacon in the Lutheran church, to serve at
the Lord’s beck and call, teaching and ministering to others in need. The classroom is now, as John Wesley would
say about his parish, the world.
In retrospect there is an easier (and better) way to do things than
imagining we chart our own course and captain our own ship. Mom knew that; her boys took a while to
figure it out. Learned in the process…answer
God…it’s never too late!
