Footprints that lead to Jesus

Have you ever looked back to see how you got to where you are now?  Looking back over my life  I try to trace the path God lead me on as He drew me to Himself.

The trail begins with my parents and my baptism as an infant in the Lutheran Church.

The next footprint I see is a “Stand up for Jesus” pennant that I must have received from church, but I only remember sitting on a rock at the corner of Chatam and Tireman in Detroit, waiting for my mom to come home from work and waving that pennant while I waited.  It was 1968 and the Detroit Tigers had won the pennant.

Then there is another partial print when I was in early elementary school and attended VBS with a friend from school. My memory of that experience is the final night when all the crafts were on display. I distinctly remember stealing a gum drop off a “tree”, a branch mounted in plaster and decorated with gum drops.

Looking back I see praying. Every night. First…

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die, before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

And then the Lord’s prayer. Every night.

When I was in middle school my next door neighbor and babysitter mentioned that I should look up Young Life when I got to high school.

I did. The leader of Young Life couldn’t believe my babysitter told me to do that, her memory of my sitter was of a camper who cried every night.

November my freshman year in high school I attended a Young Life fall retreat. That is when I used to say my journey with God began.

Looking back I understand now that the journey began when God “knit me together in my mother’s womb”.  The trail I can see is not complete, a lot of the road I traveled isn’t clear to me.  The Sunday School teacher who gave me the pennant, the VBS teachers who put up with me all week, none of whom I can remember at all…they were all part of the path.

Seeds were planted.  Watering was done.

And eventually, new growth, birth.

Do you have young children?  This is a long journey, and it began with God’s idea of your child.  I don’t know when you’ll see the new growth, the birth, but I do know that to get there it will require some planting and some watering, lots of patience and total trust.

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