Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – 1 Thessalonians 1-3
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Mark 5:19
Jesus: Stay here; I want you to go back home to your own people and let them see what the Lord has done—how He has had mercy on you.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
“I want you to go back home to your own people.” The newly freed man didn’t expect that. He probably didn’t want it, either. Like most of us, the man probably wanted to accompany Jesus on His mission journey through the other towns of Galilee and Judea spreading the good news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that wasn’t the mission Jesus gave him. Jesus told him to go home and talk to his family. The people that knew him best.
That’s tough work! Let me give you a sample from the secular side of the world. In my last assignment, I was the Chief of Staff of the Army Medical Department Center and School. That sounds like a fancy title, but not a lot of people know what it really means to be a Chief of Staff or what the Army Medical Department Center and School is all about. But looking back at the job, it was a pretty important position.
The Center and School is the place where the Army trained all its enlisted medical specialties and conducted all its leadership training. It is also the place where the doctrine, techniques, tactics, and procedures for medical support in combat and deployed situations is developed and codified for the Army and for much of the Joint medical support around the world. It is the largest allied health training facility in the world, with 3600 staff and faculty graduating more than 40,000 students a year in over 350 different course and 200 medical specialties and sub-specialties. All of the specialties and sub-specialties that can be accredited in civilian schools are accredited by those same boards and institutions to ensure the quality of training and subsequent medical support for our service members is the same or better than their civilian counterparts.
Now that sounds like a fairly impressive organization, right? And the Chief of Staff, my last position in the Army, orchestrates the staff, the department decoratorates, to make sure all of those activities happen the way they are supposed to. For me, it meant pretty long days for three years with back to back meetings all day long from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm almost every day. Thousands of pages of material to read and edit, hundreds of emails every day, and directing all that work to the right staff agencies for action and answers. Fun most days, exciting, exhausting, too.
When I went into a meeting, one of my favorite coffee cups would already be sitting at my seat at the table with steaming coffee. A copy of the briefing slides would be at my place with my favorite brand of pen and paper next to it. Everything ready to go so I when I came into the room for the meeting, I didn’t have to worry about anything but focusing on the meeting I was about to attend. My presence was announced when I walked into the conference room and people stood at attention. Sounds pretty important, doesn’t it?
But when I went home, I wasn’t Colonel Agee anymore. I was dad, Dick, son. No one at home really knew or understood what I did every day when I put on my uniform and went to that building down the street. They knew I did something important because of all the people that recognized me whenever we went anywhere on the installation. They knew Chief of Staff of the Army Medical Department Center and School must be a fairly decent position because my picture was on the wall of half the buildings at Fort Sam Houston and a lot of the policies on the bulletin boards held my signature at the bottom of the page. But they didn’t really think much about it because I was just dad or son or Dick. I took out the trash, helped with dishes, sometimes swept or vacuumed floors, and sometimes folded laundry. I was just a member of the family.
I share that to explain the difficulty in sharing with family sometimes the news of who you are or how you have changed. Frankly, I still wanted to be just dad and son and Dick at home. I was glad to shed Colonel when I walked through the doors at home. But if I wanted to tell them what I did and explain the position I held near the end of my career, I’m not sure most of my family would have understood or accepted the power I wielded as Chief of Staff. I grew up with my brothers and sisters. They knew me. My parents knew the trouble I caused them and all my shortfalls. It would be hard for them to accept the thought that with just a few words dozens or even hundreds of people would do what I asked. They would have a hard time believing I could influence how medical structures operated on battlefields around the world. I was just dad or Dick or son.
The man freed from his demon possession would have a tough time ahead. Jesus wanted him to witness to those who knew him best. He was to show the change in him. He was to share the message and not just talk about it, but live it every day in front of those who knew him best. This changed man was to prove himself to those who did not trust him, those who threw him into the street and chained him up in the cemeteries because he had been a danger to the community. His task would be his toughest assignment. But that’s sometimes what Jesus calls us to do. Live the life He calls us to, just where we are, the toughest place to live.
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