The Dash

So here I sit, one day after Christmas. The day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. And in my devotions I'm reading about Jesus' death. What struck me was this: The contrast between these two stories and how awesome and powerful and VERY well known they both are. BUT, what about all the stories in between. What about all the things that Jesus did between His birth and death. What about those stories? As I've talked about before, I love to read and meditate on the lesser known (or at least the lesser talked about) passages in the Bible about Jesus' ministry. As Jeff talks about, we can kind of just pass by these incredible stories and totally miss what they meant then and what they mean to us here in 2007.

Then this thought: What about you and me? What are we doing between our birth and death. Go to any cemetery and look at any gravestone and what do you see? You see the "pertinent" info--the name, date of arrival, date of death, etc. BUT what you don't see is what I think is most important information. And that is this-- What did that person do with their "dash"? That little dash-mark on the stone between their birth and death is what I want to know about. I want to what they did with their life-- their "dash". What is their story, ESPECIALLY their God story?

So, again, what about you and me? What are we doing with OUR dash. Five, ten, even fifty years from now, what are people going to say we did, or are doing, with our lives?

In the future, when people look back on the "history" of Cheyenne and Element Church, I don't want them to say or think " Wow, look what so-and-so did." Or even "Wow look what Element Church did" I want them to say this--"Wow, look what GOD did in Cheyenne!" "Look at what God can do with and through people that simply obey and then go do."
Grant