I Want to Be One of Them

As I've been delving into Scripture more over the past month, the KINGDOM reading plan has be spending a good amount of time in the Old Testament.  Like most 21st century Christians, I typically make most of my personal focus on the New Testament, so this has been a good shift for me. 

The stories of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Samson, Joshua, and Ruth are so familiar to me--they're the stories I grew up listening to in Sunday School.  Because I know them so well, when my almost-four-year-old comes home from Sunday School and tells me in her scattered way about a few highlights (and some random facts) that she learned at church that morning, I can usually guess the person if not the story as well.  It's good to have that familiarity.  But, like one of the boys in the Sunday School class I teach has said, it can also be bad.  It loses something.

By spending every morning with this familiar friends over the past 26 days, I have been reminded of something.  They're family.  It's really like reading the Christmas letters I so enjoy every year.  This is their year--their life--in review.  Whether it's the highlights, like God saving Noah's family in the ark or Samson beating up on the Philistines so many times or Ruth's devotion to Naomi, or the lowlights, like Jacob stealing Esau's birthright and blessing or Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt or the many times the Israelites worshipped idols, it's them.  It's truth.  And it's family.

I listened to some great Christian music (rare for me) on the way home from Muskegon last night.  One of the songs that came on was "When the Saints" by Sara Groves.  It's such an amazing song, because it highlights people from the Bible and the saints of our times--Jim Elliot, Mother Theresa--and then she says, "When the saints go marching in, I want to be one of them." 

I do.  Whether it's the highlights of my life or the lowlights, I want to see what God has done in my life and is doing in my life, and I want to walk with Him.  I want to walk with them into His kingdom.  I want to arrive Home and greet my Father and our family including myself among my brothers and sisters throughout the ages.  It's an amazing thought to consider.  I'm not walking this alone.  God walked here before me in the flesh of Jesus.  But there was also David and Jacob and Joseph and Paul and Silas and Jim and Theresa and so many others.  We'll make it, because they did.