Like the uniqueness of a thumb print or the cardiogram readout of each human being, so also is the arc of each individual’s lifespan. While God knows all things, every new day is, to us, a gift containing elements anticipated and non. I think it’s children who thrive most on the surprise elements, having no agenda themselves but to explore, to play, to be fed, to be snuggled, etc. The unexpected, for them, is like the second chocolate ice cream cone offered (Grandmas are the best!). Adults are constrained by meetings, work hours, commute times, household duties, doctors’ appointments (once adamant we’d never talk about those things), pharmacy runs, etc. But say, from 15 years old to the present, who could have imagined where life has taken us? Just like the peaks and valleys of that EKG, there have been moments of great highs and moments, well, not so high.
For a first Century Galilean fisherman, life was pretty well mapped out. Long, hard days of fishing, repairing and cleaning nets, marketing fish caught, and raising a family. Familiar, predictable, steady, in a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of way. That is, until an itinerant preacher/teacher walks by, sees him, and invites him to leave behind everything he knows and become a student of what this teacher’s offering. And the fisherman feels strangely compelled to do just that! (His ‘arc’ has just gone off on a wild tangent!)
Move that arc forward just three short years and now that Galilean, who has been on a 36-month-long rollercoaster ride of unexpected everything, is living the most beautifully terrifying set of circumstances imaginable! He’s like the caterpillar who has left his cocoon, totally transformed. He’s braced for a life of the unknown. And that life proves not to disappoint. I mean, who knew his rough scribblings would still be read 2,000 years later, and in over 100 languages, and in ‘the remotest places on earth!’ Who knew that the Church he helped start would have billions of members and would still be growing? Who knew his name, his sacrificial service, his faithfulness, his story, would all be loved and spoken and a source of blessing?
Who knows where our story can still take us? PD
Don graduated from Regent University in 1988 and moved to France for seven years, coming back to the US briefly to marry Sue in 1990. The work in France included working in a Christian School and helping plant a church before returning in 1995. He’s been pastor of Peninsula Vineyard since 1999. He enjoys counseling, especially married couples, traveling back to France (with Sue), reading, doing Sudoku puzzles and sleuthing out good, dark chocolate. Don serves as the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church Peninsula, in Newport News, Virginia.