Thursday Morning's High & Lows

I wanted to share with you what happened yesterday morning, Thursday – January 14, 2014. Both of these events occurred before 7:00 in the morning. One was a significantly tremendous thing, the other represented and very difficult thing.

First the difficult thing: I drove my wife Carol to the airport to fly to California. It is difficult for a variety of reasons. Here are only a few:

• Carol and I made a vow to be together (in sickness & in health, in poverty & in wealth, to love & to cherish) 35 years ago and we cherish time with one another.
• I am a better person with Carol near me.
• She likes having me around too.
• We both enjoy laughing, flirting, eating, exercising, and discussing spiritual truths together.

But we learned that our oldest daughter Julie is very much needing her mother’s help during her last month of pregnancy. So off she goes.

As soon as I learned that she would be flying out early Thursday I texted a group of young men that I meet for discipleship that I would be unable to be at our weekly meeting so I could take her to the airport. This leads me to the significantly tremendous thing.

Secondly significantly tremendous thing: As I am taking my wife to the airport I get the above photo above sent to me. It is a picture of two groups of guys who both meet on Thursday mornings for discipleship and bible study. Why is “significantly tremendous” you ask? There are far too many reasons for me to describe but here are a few:

• I have been meeting with the older group of men for 18-19 years. I love these guys and have enjoyed their friendship and encouragement for a very long time.
• But over the summer I felt led to begin a new group of younger men who I believed needed an old mentor to disciple them.
• I regretfully announced to the older group that they didn’t need me to lead their group. I told them that each of them was well qualified to take over the leadership. I told them that I would be starting a new group and that I would miss greatly miss the time we spend together on Thursday mornings. AND I HAVE MISSED THEM DEEPLY.
• I had assumed that since I had unexpectedly cancelled our young men’s discipleship group that they would be thankful for the morning off and sleep in (that’s what I would have done when I was in my 20’s).
• The new discipleship group of younger men decided on their own to join with the older group of men at another restaurant.
• Two of my greatest joys:
  1. A group of my peers, whom I have been meeting with for bible study many years, who I have grown to love and enjoy, who I miss almost every Thursday…
  2. And a new group of younger men, who I am going to watch grow in spiritual maturity; who are going to be better men - better husbands - better fathers - and become disciple makers themselves.
  These two groups of men are sitting together at the same table enjoying one another, enjoying one of the older men leading a bible study, enjoying breakfast together, enjoying the presence of God together!

My heart smiles.

I love my church! I have a dream that everyman in our church would be intentional about beginning the process of becoming or helping others to become growing, vibrant disciples of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Phil Sallee, Pastor
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