A long and winding road

So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His word.  John 4:40-41

So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him, having seen all that He had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.  John 4:45

I so did not let students start sentences with “So” and “Then” when I was teaching English at Grace.  These are coordinating conjunctions, and they should be used to connect equal ideas, so how could they start a sentence?  Logical.  But certainly the Gospels are full of this connecting tool.  Because it is one big long story.  His story.

Yesterday I met with this guy who has this project.  For eight years he has hauled a handful of high school students up and down the California coast for two weeks in the summer in his yacht.  And they read Steinbeck and watch Master and Commander and dive and journal and dissect sea urchins and paint and visit museums and sit on high cliffs and watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.  And he wants me to write this all down in credible educational verbiage so that this vision lives on.  So I was poking about, trying to get a handle on Essential Questions and Measurable Objectives and all that and this is what it boils down to: What is man that You are mindful of him?  and We all have a story to tell that is part of the story of God’s great love.  

Who knows what Jesus said during those two days in the Samaritan town?  Or what he did in Jerusalem besides cast out the money changers from the temple?  We, two thousand years into history, simply do not know.    To whom else did He say, “everything I have ever done.”  He knew her story, and that knowing pierced her heart to the tender spot.  What stories were told, and whose stories were told?  Not I.  But those moments were woven into the plot, the rising action to the climax, connected by coordinating conjunctions, each soul connected to the next, equal in the eyes of the LORD.  The exact details unrecorded, but part of the tale.

And it continues.  We have two thirteen-year-old Chinese boys here with us for five days.  I am pretty sure the details of 220 South Country Club Road and Guerro Canelo and A Mountain will dissipate into a blur of the Disneyland, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and the Lincoln Memorial whirlwind.  But as Mary Anne stepped into Grandpa’s place, and with gentle words tucked two of the little Bibles that he has stacked high in the spare room in five languages into curious and eager hands, one never knows.  

Jesus said to them, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”