Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Take a different route

Yesterday I put my grandson in his stroller and went for a walk. I took the same route I usually take when I am walking by myself. I got about 3/4 of the way through when I realized I had dropped one of his burp cloths somewhere along the route. So, instead of completing the route, I turned around and retraced my steps. The most interesting thing was that I noticed so many "new" things, that several times I had to ask myself if I was going the right way! Could it be that I do the same thing in my life? Am I doing the same things, the same way so often, that I miss some fabulous things that were there the whole time?

As my husband and I are reading some books about marriage, we've been discussing whether or not people can really change; especially couples like us who have been married for 25 years. I just heard a statistic on the radio that most divorced people surveyed 5-7 years after their divorce said that if they had worked a little harder, they may not have gotten divorced. The speaker also said that most people drown 10 feet from shore! In other words, hope is not that far away! We just need a new perspective. Perhaps it's time to take a different route and notice some new things.

Perhaps the way we've been "doing church" needs to change. What the church (universal) has been doing isn't working. In fact, we're drowning. But what if we're only 10 feet from shore? What if the answer is close at hand? My husband challenged the congregation last Sunday to take a new route. He asked for 10 people to commit to a year of discipleship training for themselves, with the understanding that each person would then train someone else the following year. Will we move away from the route we've always taken, gain a new perspective and make it to shore?

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