I have had some interesting Thanksgiving holidays in my life. Just before Thanksgiving in my last year of seminary I flew to Dallas to play in a football game featuring teams from my school (Talbot Seminary) and Dallas Theological Seminary (it's a long story). I played cornerback and my assignment was to cover a wide receiver who the year before had been playing for the Kansas City Chiefs. I don't want to brag, but I admit I take pride in the fact that he only caught a couple of passes and scored no touchdowns. However, my job was made more difficult by the fact that the day before the game I came down with the flu. I was miserably sick during the game and continued to be sick when we flew home the next day. My plan had been to go to Bakersfield to spend Thanksgiving with my parents but I felt too sick to make the drive home. So that Thanksgiving I spent alone in my apartment feeling awful. I heated up a frozen enchilada dinner for my Thanksgiving meal. It was not exactly a high point in my life.
A year later my life had changed dramatically. Laurie and I had gotten married in August and that next Thanksgiving was our first as husband and wife. We had agreed to spend that Thanksgiving with Laurie's parents. Their plan was to go camping in the Anza Borrego desert. They wanted us to come out there and have our Thanksgiving meal with them at the campground. Unfortunately, once again, the day before the holiday I came down with the flu! As a newlywed husband I didn't really feel free to cancel our trip out to the desert so we went ahead with our plan. I remember sitting on a bench at a campground picnic table aching and feeling feverish, wishing I could lie down in a bed somewhere and sleep. It was just awful. The next year as Thanksgiving approached I was fearful that I might get sick again, but to my great joy I managed to break the pattern of the previous two years.
Today is a significant day in our family's life. Michael and Carissa leave today for the trek to their new home in Meridian, Mississippi. Mississippi? The only thing about Mississippi that I've ever found appealing was the way it sounded when you spell it out. It has a nice rhythm, doesn't it? But come on, Meridian is 1851 miles away!
Laurie and I have been enormously blessed the past few years and we know it. We have had the uncommon privilege of living in the same area as our adult children, and not just living near them but getting to worship with them and see them pretty much every week at church. This has been a source of more joy for us than I can adequately explain. I doubt there has been a day that has gone by in the past few years that I have not thanked God for this great blessing.
No longer a Blockbuster night!
I recently reflected on change and how it can be difficult. I encountered another example of change last week when I heard the announcement that Blockbuster is history. It doesn't seem that long ago when Blockbuster video stores were nearly as ubiquitous as Starbucks outlets are today. Yet the corporation is folding its tents for good. The last day to rent videos from their stores was this past Saturday. By January the only remnant of them will be about 50 independently-owned stores with the Blockbuster brand name scattered throughout a handful of states.
The advent of Blockbuster coincided closely with the arrival of the next generation of Myatts. The company began business the year our son, Toby, was born. I recall days before Blockbuster when we patronized small, independent video stores, but those quickly faded from existence when that new gorilla-sized chain appeared on the scene. I have sort of love-hate memories of Blockbuster. It was awfully fun to go to that store and peruse its shelves in search of either some promising movie we all looked forward to seeing or finding some unanticipated gem. That was the love part. The hate part was going through that entire store and not finding a single movie that was appealing. That happened too many times.
Mission is still on my mind. It would be correct to say that mission, of course, should always be on our minds. If it's not it isn't really our mission, it's merely a preference. Having said that, I want to reiterate that in order to have a life that is full of passion and that counts for something we need a mission that means something significant. This is good news for followers of Jesus Christ because we have such a mission. We are on the planet to be his priests, to declare his praise and make him known both in the way we live and the words we speak.
However, though this is the mission every believer should pursue, it won't look exactly the same for every child of God. We can see analogies for this reality in many aspects of life. An army that is on a military campaign will have some soldiers that handle communications, some that fire large artillery pieces, some that drive trucks, some that fly helicopters and so on. The army is not just a large group of riflemen. They all have different ways of contributing to the army's mission. I saw this in another context when Laurie was in the hospital. The mission of the medical personnel was to care for and hopefully aid in the healing of sick and hurting people. Yet they all contributed to that goal in different ways. There were nurses who prepared patients for surgeries, doctors who administered anesthetics, surgeons who performed operations, nurses who cared for patients who were sick or recovering, orderlies who moved patients around, housekeepers who prepared beds and delivered food, and many more. All serve the same mission, but they do it in different ways.