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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Heh. 2 days in a row I’m posting something in reference to Robert Hruzek’s Middlezone Musings. Robert has a monthly group writing project called What I Learned From (WILF)… The current theme is WILF A Mountaintop Experience. I was intrigued by this topic, and I actually have thoughts on it. 🙂

Many many years ago I went on a missions trip to Mexico with a group from my church. On the trip we witnessed to people with songs and drama, visited a prison and an orphanage, and in general got really close to each other and to God. We even camped out overnight on a mountain, but that’s not exactly what I want to talk about here.

If you’ve ever been on a short-term mission trip you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that you come back on quite a high emotionally. It takes a while to come back down to earth and the reality of normal existence.

When we returned to our church the following Sunday each team member was asked to stand up and report to the congregation how the trip had gone and what we’d gotten out of it.

One young man (still in high school) was especially affected by the experience, and he stood up in front of about 300 people and told them how great it had been, how much we’d grown and gotten close to God, and then he told them:

“…and all of you are spiritually DEAD!”

Yeah. That wasn’t smooth. Thankfully the adults in the room were polite and I never heard anything else about it. It really stuck in my head though. And yes I’m extremely grateful that that foolishness didn’t come out of MY mouth. It could have.

What did I learn from the mountaintop experience? Enthusiasm and the emotional high from phenomenal circumstances are great things, but it’s important to not let those emotions cause you to foolishly hurt others (and yourself-my friend’s credibility was pretty low after that).

Thus endeth my lesson.

😀

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to avoid foolishness.

Image courtesy of proamateur85 via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.