Summary: I've lived in a number of states, traveled throughout the world, and met more people than I can count. My wife has been engaged in mission work in Haiti and other countries; one of our daughters lived for a few years China and studied in Japan. I've done language study by immersion in Costa Rica, and I've preached in Liberia and Zimbabwe. The call to ministry has taken me, in ways I could never have imagined, to the ends of the earth. A couple of years ago my mind was wandering through social media--have you ever found yourself there?--and I took one of those tests---embarrassing, I know---and the question was, "Where are you most suited to live?" So I filled out the questionnaire, and in the end can you guess where all my responses led? To the very place where I was born! Columbus, Georgia! And I had the sense: I really have not come such a long way in this journey--in fact, I am back where I started! The spiritual classics often describe the Christian life as a journey--Dante and Bunyan, for example; but farther back the missionary travels of Paul the Apostle and the passage of Israel from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. So perhaps you have found yourself in a moment of self-awareness, and you wondered, "Am I really back at the beginning?" Most of us wish we were farther along on the road to character, to borrow a phrase from David Brooks. Advent gives us the occasion to start over. It is a fresh beginning. It's not quite like the cultural pressure to make resolutions in the new year, to lose weight or learn a new language or to worry less. Not that any of this is such a bad thing. But that is more about individual self-improvement, personal re-invention, human effort.
