And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
This month I am writing from the wide plains of Montana, west-bound aboard the Empire Builder. The Empire Builder, as you may know, is the train that travels from Chicago to Seattle seven days a week. My wife and I boarded in Minneapolis, en route to Shelby in mid-Montana. We are visiting friends and family for the weekend.
Now, the Empire Builder is an interesting way to travel. In Minneapolis the train snakes through the seedy underside of town: you are always looking up, it seems, to sidewalk level, the bridge decks, the dark facades of the warehouse district near the river, etc., passing slowly. Once in the countryside, however, the train courses freely toward the horizon, intersecting a string of small and mid-sized towns along the way. We see the sidetracks and elevators. We roll by “the graveyards of rusted automobiles.” We see the immense fields of small grains, just blushing green in the spring.
And then there are the stories. Aboard the train, we meet an Englishwoman on holiday. She boarded in Chicago, heading for Seattle. “I’m 84 years old,” she explains, “and I haven’t much time left. There’s so much I want to see!” We visit with a young couple who boarded with us in Minneapolis. “We want to hang out in Seattle,” they report. “Maybe we’ll climb a mountain.” We meet a young lady, age 10, whose family has emigrated from China and landed improbably in Shelby. “I can speak Cantonese,” she informs us. And just outside the window, there are countless more stories awaiting discovery.
Gazing out the window, I think of the stories that I will never hear, the people that I will never meet. The Empire Builder passes them by in a blur, barely touching them at all. We roll in, roll through, and roll on again.
I’m glad that Jesus walked.
Effective ministry requires more than a “whistle stop.” The Empire Builder slows down, just a little, while traveling through town. It is enough to discern a few faces — there is a woman going into the drug store; there is a boy riding his bicycle — but little more. But Jesus walks right into our lives. He lingers as long as we’ll have him. He does not hurry away. He is not too busy or too behind schedule to lavish his undivided attention upon us. He has come to live among us, after all. He is not just passing by.
You might want to travel by train sometime, too. But if you are wanting to make a difference — if you are wanting real ministry — you need to get off the train and into the street. You need to slow down. You need to make room in your busy schedule for people, for hearing a story and maybe sharing your own. This is the model of Jesus. Stop the train. Tell the story.