A Redemptive Imagination by Julie Rodgers

We were thrilled to have over 50 mentors at our recent Mentor Enrichment, where Garrett Smith, our Director of Mentoring, encouraged us to have a redemptive imagination regarding how God will move in the lives of our students. He gave a word from the book of Hebrews that challenged us to have hope in Christ even when immediate circumstances seem hopeless, and to anticipate God showing up and surprising us in unexpected ways.

After we shared a meal and prayed for our students---for a biblical imagination to explode inside us all---we split up into smaller groups to share stories and wrestle together with questions about mentoring. Moving stories of mutual transformation were shared. Stories about families opening their homes, building trust between parents and mentors who work together to help children flourish. There were stories about kids and mentors exploring their gifts together, with one mentor showing us the purse she made with her mentee as they explored her student's passion for fashion. Among all the stories of quiet students beginning to finally open up, with small gestures of gratitude showing growth was occurring in students, a number of stories were along the lines of one shared by a mentor that went something like this: 

I guess what's really impacted me has been entering into a new world that's so far outside of my old bubble. I mean, life has happened to my mentee, and I don't really know what to say or do---I can't fix it---but I can just be there with him when life happens. I feel like it's totally changed me in the process, and I almost can't relate to people from my old bubble anymore because my mentee's world has blown open the small view of the world I used to have. My relationship with him, and my experience at Mercy Street, has changed my relationship with the Lord and made me sensitive to so many challenges that I hadn't previously been exposed to. It's made me so much more dependent on the Lord, and I feel like God led me into my student's life to change me in the process.

The whole room nodded in agreement, with several "Amen" and "Me Too!" words of solidarity thrown in the mix. Everyone walked away feeling encouraged, not because we found all the answers to solve the problems, but because we remembered together that God is at work in the mutually transforming relationships forming in West Dallas.

Blue by Trey Hill

My wife was driving the kids home from school trying to beat the coming ice storm. On the way, she spotted a stray dog in an empty lot near our home. Now there are lot of strays in the neighborhood and this one seemed out of place--it was statelier and obviously once had on a collar by the way the fur lay around the neck. She stopped to get him out of the coming storm. He was a little timid and wouldn’t get in the car; so Graham, my youngest son, walked him home the last ½ mile.

The plan was to keep him one night, find his owner and return him or take him to the SPCA. But “Icemageddon” hit and we were iced in for a few days.

Well, Blue, that’s what I started calling him, is a very handsome and sweet dog. I am not normally a fan of Pit Bulls or Pit mixes, but Blue was part Labrador Retriever. (See, I have always been a Lab guy. But somehow Melissa convinced me to get a Labradoodle when Samson our loveable, giant Lab died a few years back. Then, even worse, my precious daughter Olivia only wanted a teacup Maltipoo for Christmas two years ago. After emphatic “No’s!” for months, I finally broke on Christmas eve day and drove to Cleburne to buy a happy accident between a toy poodle and a Maltese. Single worst decision of my life. But I digress. Suffice it so say, I am a bit embarrassed to have more Poodle in my house than Lab.)

So long story short, Blue was my chance to reclaim my man card. He was block-headed and gun-metal grey. He was a manly dog, and I took a liking to him and he took a liking to me. (And he was part Lab. So between my Labradoodle and my Pitador I had one full Lab again.) When I found out that Blue did not have a microchip and no one had posted “Lost Dog” signs online or in the neighborhood, I kept him.

Why am I telling you all this? Because on Christmas day Blue became my teacher.

Being a stray, Blue liked to wander. On occasion he would bolt out the front door and refuse to come when called. He usually wandered for an hour or so and made his way home. On Christmas day he escaped as we were going to see a movie. After trying to coax him back inside with treats to no avail, we finally had to go. We expected him to be waiting at the front door when we returned. But he wasn’t. Melissa and I took turns driving around the neighborhood looking for him. No luck. He was gone, and I was sad.

At about 11 pm, after we got the kids to bed, Scout the Labradoodle started half-barking by the front door. I went to see why she was barking. When I opened the door there was Blue, bloody, filthy and exhausted. He nearly collapsed when he came in the door. He had been attacked by some neighborhood dogs. Not all dogs play quite as nice as his Poodle-mix house mates. After cleaning him up as best we could that night, I took him to the vet the next day to get him stitched up and thoroughly checked out. He was pretty beat up, but he was going to be fine.

I felt like screaming at him for his foolish, wandering ways. I mean didn’t he realize how good he has it at our house—two meals a day, warm spot to sleep next to my bed, plenty of love. Then it hit me.

I am Blue.

I have been adopted into an eternal family, literally plucked out by my Heavenly Father.  I have been given “all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3) and promised an eternal inheritance sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13,14) I am completely safe when I am abiding in Jesus. Yet, I am prone to wander too. 

It makes no sense, but I try and find happiness and fulfilment in things other than Jesus. For me, it is the praise of man (which is fickle and fleeting) and sometimes the pursuit of ease and comfort (which ensures you are not considering the interests of others ahead of your own and acts as an antiseptic to real life). I always end up wearied and beaten in the end.

If you are anything like me, you are like Blue too. Your wanderings may be different but you wander from time to time. My prayer this year is that I will know more deeply the love of my Father and that all his promises are true. I pray my heart will wander less and abide more. I pray:

“O to grace how great a debtor Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above.”

(Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing)