A LITTLE HELP

 

 

            I’ve been thinking about how many different people were involved in leading me to Christ and how many more have helped in my spiritual growth.  For me it has surely taken a community.  To get me to Jesus it took my parents, school teachers, friends and other kindred. In my Christian life and ministry there have been precious individuals that I could never repay for their investments in me.  Teachers in different schools have been an asset to my ministry.  In the early nineteen eighties I began attending the Samford Extension classes in Oneonta.  In nineteen ninety I started on campus at Samford.  Later I attended Beeson Divinity School.  Going to school was not as much for degrees as it was to keep me studying.  Therefore the schools provided me with people who helped me in those studies.  There have been people in the churches I have pastored that have been great help in the further development of my Christian growth.  My wife has always challenged me to be more than what I would have been satisfied with by nature.  God knew that I would need that so he gave her to me to keep me reaching higher.  Other pastors have been a pastor to me.  I am so grateful for their counsel and friendship over the years.

            Well, I began thinking about this as Sterling, Lilah and I was in the field behind the house a few days ago and was looking at all the butterflies.  There were some pretty ones to be seen.  Did you know that the Monarch may migrate from Canada to Central Mexico and back?  The Monarch is the beautiful butterfly that is black, white and orange.  It has stripes as well as little black dots on it.  No one individual makes the full migration.   In fact it takes five generations to complete the migration that begins in the spring and is completed in late fall.  Their whole life is a journey.  Each is born for a different leg of the journey. 

            I suppose our earthly life is just a portion of the journey as a whole.  Someone died the same day we were born.  The day we die someone else will be born.  It is my prayer that there is someone in the next generation that will take the baton as we hand it off and finish at least their part of the race.  We have had help.  Someone helped us to get this far.  Maybe we can help someone else to grow and get a little farther.  God bless you as you grow.

 

 

 

Yours in Christ,

 

Brother Randy Burtram

 

(Originally published August 30, 2015)