It is Easter coming – and we condense an already condensed 3 years of ministry into a month of study – and watch and feel Jesus in His Journeying… Some days easy, some days hard… I would say that it was a novel new day each day – yet Jesus KNEW EXACTLY what He was walking into…

Jesus Begins to Preach (Matthew 4:12-17)

When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali – to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles – THE PEOPLE LIVING IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT; on those living in the land of the shadow of death A LIGHT HAS DAWNED.” From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

A Jesus Journey never stops…

My journey this past year and 10 years has no scale nor complexity that Jesus had – but yet I realize that this Jesus Journey for each of us is mapped out in a TRIP-TIK if we choose to open that up with the Lord’s account – and study the roadmap of life. Our lives can be the open road or the intricate mountain passes or the tiny street nooks of fun things to look at. Really our Jesus-journey is for each of us and so varied even day to day…  

I enjoyed my trip yesterday – gave a talk and saw the operations of a very impressive small group. When someone said “You are getting so much mileage out of that 4 weeks sabbatical” I reply YES I AM! – I did not imagine that I could use it to drive encouragement to as many people as possible AT WORK, as the opportunities to speak to big small groups of people and especially individuals fell right into my life-mission “TRIP-TIK”.  WELL… YES… Yes, I actually DID know and was excited for the possibilities. I knew that both for my learning and for the eventual teaching, that it is SO IMPORTANT to take folks on this journey of science and life… and oh the people you will meet – and all that fun stuff in between. It is not all about me – but about the gears turning inside the mindsets of the folks you get to talk to – the folks who are going places even when sitting simply at a lunch and learn before dashing back to the lab. It was a joy of seeing minds turning for the places that the students of life will go…

So yes, I hopped in my Subaru and with my PowerPoint slide decks fully decked out – these are encouragement slides and science journey slides that I started making at the same time I started my sabbatical – I even wondered at my hyper-drive to spend 3 hours one Sunday afternoon at the beach plugged into the electricity of the boardwalk pavilion to work on 5 slides which are beautiful to me – and meaningful to my experiments – and a treasure of trivial stuff that is not trivial. So, with these slides in hand, I jumped at the opportunity to visit one of our sister-sites. SO COOL TO SEE IN PERSON! I also brought my own posterboards of my science fair of me – and just like the day before this, when I was a science fair judge – you need good shoes to keep journeying on this life journey… and good tires too as yesterday was rain rain rain – but no problem for my new-ish tires…

Crossing the BIG bridge, in to and from the event, and seeing the majesty of the steel towering, I was impressed with visual beauty of engineering usefulness combined with the strength of it – that bridge was sturdy – and I am sure and hopeful that the engineering designs allow it to withstand extreme weather conditions and whatnot… Can you imagine the folks sitting up at the top and overseeing their work – knowing that generations to come would benefit from their day to day back-breaking work. Now imagine that small scale – at the work bench – at the engineering discussions – at the data crunching – at the anything that you do locale… Imagine that again in bigger life-scale – and then in God-scale – and then come back to that Jesus Journey that Jesus went on during his short time on earth…  It is not just engineering and timing – it is a whole Majestic view of God’s Sovereignty to take us on our journeys just like Jesus took Himself on His… God is walking us back to Him – and giving us Mountains to both look at and climb, valleys to admire and slide into, and flat even life fields too – just walk the narrow way rather than the wide wander.

I have the best advice that I can give – live today in a Jesus-Way…  Just be open to the opportunities – and get out there and meet the people – and be the “encourager” or use whatever spiritual gift you have for this life journey… KEEP WALKING… Good shoes…  Maybe bring a good PowerPoint set of slides or posterboards too… Take your smile and your listening ears…

Bring your Jesus Journey to where He needs you to go.

AMEN!