Puffs of Powder & Pastor Austin
When I was in middle school, my youth group went skiing. Pastor Austin, who loved all things fast, was our slope mentor, darting from one new skier to another. If you happened to be lying on your back with your skis and poles looking like a pile of Pick Up Sticks, he would shwoosh to your side, put out his hand and instantly pop you up in the right direction (remember… I was living in a tiny middle schooler body at this point). He’d give you a pointer or two, grin, then take off. You could spot him all the way down the hill by these little puffs of powder with each zig zag he made.
I couldn’t really get the zig zag thing. Directing my skis toward pine trees or steep looking cliffs made me nervous, so I tried to keep them in parallel lines, pointing toward the bottom of the hill at all times. This worked beautifully on the hills that were (as another new skier wrote this week) the size of a pimple. But then I took this approach to the mountain.
With ski tips pointed toward the lodge below (which looked like a Monopoly-sized hotel), I was shocked at how quickly my velocity doubled and then tripled. The wind whipped my eyelids back into little squints, so that I could only barely make out a skier just ahead. It was Pastor Austin. I was gaining on him and knew nothing else to do but yell out, “I’m commmmiiiiiiiiing!”
He immediately widened his skis and made a triangle out of his legs so that I could hunch into a little ball and ski right through! Some skiers on the lift above us cheered, as if this were a perfectly planned stunt, rather than a miraculous feat of wonder.
Good pastors do what Pastor Austin did. When you’re on your back, they shwoosh to your side, and help you pick up your sticks and lay them straight. But when you pick up so much velocity that you risk trampling others, they make a triangle, not a roadblock. A good pastor zig zags gracefully, with balance. He invites you to do the same.
Do you know any good pastors?