The Old Box.
I’m going to a thrift store this weekend, because I need an old box.
This can’t be just any old box, though: I need an old box that can hold some serious junk.
This week, our students (and students all around the country) are going back to school. It’s an abrupt shift from summertime frivolity to autumnal rigidity. Lazy mornings, camp excursions, and family vacations have passed away, and a long 180 days of scholarly application stretch forward beyond the horizon. The season changes, and life changes along with it.
In the often microcosmic world of student ministry, one sees summer as the most impactive and thorough time of growth for young Christians—three months of tireless emphasis and spectacle, all with a view to profound faith experiences among youth.
All of that passes away, too.
Your group just left the cozy confines of youth group for the uncomfortable reality of…well…reality.
They just became missionaries in the largest mission field they’ve ever known.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”
This summer, our group studied the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:11-21), the meaning of baptism (Acts 19:1-7), and post-mountaintop discipleship (Matthew 17:1-9). Now they’re out there, like lambs among wolves.
How long until the vicious cycle of secularity takes hold? How long until all of the profundity and revelation of summer are devoured by something…I don’t know…cooler?
How long until the old comes back?
That’s why I need the old box. It will be a place to put the old self once you’ve taken it off. It will be locked away. Gone. Forgotten. Never to be seen again.
Whether student or adult, we all have junk for the old box.
So, I guess the question is this: What would you put in? What wolves in the real world are devouring your lambs? What overwhelms your spirit and your vitality and your confidence? What’s keeping you from the harvest?
Put it in the box.
What holds back your testimony? What keeps the name of Jesus out of your mind and off your tongue?
Put it in the box.
What part of your old self is still hanging around?
I think you know what to do.
Here’s to fall, and a surprising amount of newness.
Tyler
