Mapdot Devo

OK, so I’ll admit on the front end that this set-up story is one of those stories that will really only be interesting to those immediately involved.  “Just had to be there things.”  A Location Situation if you’re in, like, 9^th grade.  There’s a little town in Mississippi about halfway between Grenada and Jackson named Durant, Mississippi.  It’s just east of the Interstate 55 – population of about 2,600.  I’m sure millions of people drive by the exit signs on I55 that say Durant and pay no attention.  But the sign means something to someone.  Back when Andrea was growing up, her family was on the way to Florida, and their car broke down.  A kind, local sheriff, let’s call him Andy, came and picked them up and let them hang out at his house for the afternoon while the car was being fixed.  It was a regular Mayberry scene, with local church folks bringing food and the whole nine yards.

So now, every single time we pass that sign, we point it out.  “Hey! There’s good, ol’ DOO-rant, Mississippi!”  (and yes, I say it just like that) And there are other little towns like that.  There’s Star, Mississippi an unincorporated area outside of Jackson where Faith Hill called home.  And there’s similarly-named Start, Louisiana near the booming metropolis of Rayville (population 3,600)…15 minutes the other way from Monroe, where her hubby Tim McGraw called home.  They still have friends and family there.  That is to say that places that are negligible and insignificant to most folks may mean quite a lot to others.  It’s the same with Bible verses...Some of the ones we rush right through mean a great deal to someone else.  Maybe it was their grandpa’s favorite verse.  Maybe it was one they learned when they were young that inspired them to do something…or whatever, you get the point.

And, in what will likely be a short devotional, Listen for the Whisper that tells you that maybe “DOO-rant, Mississippi” isn’t a mapdot town, or a Bible verse…maybe it’s a somebody.  Maybe it’s somebody walking down the street that looks tired and hungry.  The guy that looks like he’s walked a million miles, with a million more to go.  Maybe it’s someone sitting alone in a church pew that looks like maybe there’s nowhere else to turn.  Their last stop was here to look for answers…The Answer.  Maybe it’s someone at work, and you know they have the weight of four lifetimes weighing on their shoulders.  You know they’ve brought it on themselves…bad decisions, poor choices, but still they’re buried under a mountain of poor choices.  And maybe each of those people is a “DOO-rant” unto themselves.  Other people (maybe you, maybe me) walk by them, ignore them, no reason to even glance their direction.  But God knows each of those people.  Like God told Jonah about Nineveh in Jonah 4:11, “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left…”  We judge them as unworthy of attention – or even a look sometimes.  You know, like when we pull up to the stop light, and they’re standing on the left side of your car…then you get that sudden guilt-crick in your neck, and you can only look off to the right until the light changes?  But God thinks they’re important – important enough for Jesus Christ to die for them – just like He did for you and me.  So maybe those people ought to be important to us, too.

The prodigal son made stupid choices.  He wished his father dead, and squandered his “inherited” money.  And still the father welcomed him home.  And in that parable, which person is it that Christ tells us we should be like?  I’ll use Ephesians 5:1,2 to answer my rhetorical question, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”  If they’re important to Him, they should be to us.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com