Mornin’ Juice (map)

Can anyone relate? Early in my “walk”, my learning how to navigate the bible, when the preacher man would bark out the place, the book, the letter we would be reading on this particular morning, i would hesitate a bit to see where others were heading in their book. I knew the biggies Genesis (front of the book), Psalms and Proverbs in the middle, then the gospels on the right-hand side of the book. Its when those crazy one’s like Habazabaraakuk would pop up, that i finally swallowed pride and went to this day one of my favorite places in the bible, table of contents! Yeppers, can find em’ alphabetical, Old Testament or New Testament. Then one day the ol boy got a good one on me. We were going to be looking at some of the travels of Jesus, the miles, the going to and from he and the boys took during the 3 years and he referred us to the book of maps…..

uhhhhh…..head down, book of maps?…..table of contents even let me down…nothing….reading plans, concordances, alphabetical or by order, nothing, (this is embarrassing, face probably starting to turn red) where is this book of Maps, is it an acronym?…heck with this I’m looking….ah crapadapa  …. you slippery little rascal, in the very back of the book, is where you will find those colorful topography style maps that display the various stops and timeline of Jesus and in some bibles the journeys of Paul.

I have several men that I get the chance to hang out with during the week, on this particular week, Michael Jordan who leads a wonderful time each Friday morning called Koinonia was prepping for Galatians. His prep time included piecing the place and times throughout the letters where Paul’s journey was taking him, and the timeline associated with his travels. Interesting and empowering conversation as we flipped pages, scrolled through screens to get a visual of his map.  We continue to be awestruck at his faith, his ability to persevere as those around him would try to add “something” to Jesus and his ability to encourage em’ back to the truth of Jesus and Jesus alone is our source of eternity and daily empowerment. As we started to pray it hit us,

We have a map?

Yea, no different than Jesus, Paul, Luke, Matthew, and all of the writers included in the book, we have a map. A map filled with adventure, heart ache, joy, excitement, excruciating pain, sadness, elation, pleasure, periods of life that we would just soon forget, and those we never grow weary of telling. Our map, our journey has purpose and meaning.  As walking temples (1 Corinthians 6:19) our journey is holy! It’s as significant as Paul’s, do you beLIeVE? Our lives able to do more than Christ (John 14:12) do we beLIeVE?

Today’s technology has us dropping pins on a particular point to share our location, we want people to know where we are. We share photos and events on Instagram, tweeter, facebook to ask a world to notice me, it’s part of your map. If you find yourself in a time that seems no one knows your location, no one is responding with thumbs up or like’s, we would love to help. Let us know and maybe we can share maps.

love em’ up!