Caedmon's Drawings and the Christain Life

I have a 2 year old named Caedmon. He is quite the handy man with a marker. Just come into my office and check out the posters, or the wall behind our couch for a gallery of his finest work. Even as I write, I see one on the wall that I still haven't cleaned. A pretty green in the best scribble I have ever seen. Kind of reminds me of my life's journey so far.

As a teenager at 17 I surrendered to the call on my life to serve my Lord in the ministry. It was somewhat assumed by some that would mean Oklahoma Baptist University and then straight to seminary and then the ministry. But my journey wasn't so cut and dried. In fact it took me first to become a state reporter for the Oklahoma FFA Association. Then Oklahoma State University to complete a B.S. in Agricultural Communications, not your average education for a student pastor. Of course along the way I took advantage of ministry opportunities that the Lord provided and did them to the best of my ability. Which looking back was not that good at times.

So, while at OSU, I served at Oak Grove Baptist Church volunteering as a praise leader for the youth group, then intern, then interim, then the youth pastor. Then I planned on seminary while serving at the church, but nope...

Instead we moved to Iowa for about 1 and 1/2 years with my wife 6 months pregnant and 10 hours from home. It made no sense, really. Then we dug our heals in and were ready for the "long haul" of ministry when God said that now it was time for seminary. I was more than a little confused but we moved to Louisville and God provided more opportunities to serve. The story continues, but in short now we our in Wake Forest, NC. I am a student pastor in a great church with a really odd way of getting here.

To tell you the truth, if God would have told me the path I would have taken these last 12 years of ministry I would have taken a pass. But there is no way on this side I would ever take a pass.

Maybe my two year old knows something about following God, because he draws how all over my posters and walls. It has never been a straight journey and I can take a good guess that it never will be, but the Guide has never changed and the promised land is still promised.

If you are looking for your Christian life to be a certain way or path please remember that the way is not a series of upward progressing events in life, but a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Even if that means others will see it as a crazy scribbled line.

Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. - Psalm 119:105
A man's steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way? - Proverbs 20:24
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

Who knows if Caed scribbles enough, one of those scribbles may one day hang in the Louvre.