By david lyons
I recently heard a poignant story that powerfully illustrates our need to run in our calling together with kindred spirits.
Delphina Bedonie Johnson is a Navigator leader who was raised on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona. It is within this Native American community that she and her husband decided to raise their daughter Bethani. When Navajo girls come of age, the community gathers for a five-day ceremony to collectively celebrate and usher her into becoming a young woman. The ceremony features daily runs toward the east. Each day different groups run with her to guide and encourage her, but they never pass her so that she can lead the way.
Every run gets longer, eventually culminating with the very last day as the longest run. One afternoon Bethani's run began with ominous clouds moving in quickly. But 30 of her family and friends rallied around her to spur her on as she ran. As the rainstorm engulfed them, the path became slippery, but her cousin-brothers pressed in close by her sides to catch her arm each time she slipped.
The next morning right before the break of dawn, she started her final run. Midway through the run, she got disoriented in the dark. But her cousin-brothers said, “It’s OK. It’s right there. Do you see that little bush? Just turn there and we can go.” When they got to the bush they turned and said, “Do you see that light? That’s where you’re going. Just follow that light. We’re with you. Let’s go!”
Bethani might have lost her way and not finished without the support, encouragement, and guidance of her cousin-brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and grandparents who had run that way before. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin that so easily entangles us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”
We Navigators are called “to advance the Gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of laborers living and discipling together among the lost.” But it’s dark out there. There are ominous clouds on the horizon. Sometimes it’s slippery. Sometimes we get confused or discouraged or lose our way. That’s why we need kindred spirits to come alongside us, to catch us when we stumble, to point the way, and to spur us on as we enter new and unfamiliar seasons of life and ministry in the communities where we live, work, and play.
With God’s help, each of us can run the race marked out for us. But God never intended that we run our race alone. We need to run together.
Who are you running with? Find someone who will run with you in our calling. If you can’t find someone immediately, pray for someone. That’s the kind of prayer that God loves to answer if you keep asking, seeking, and knocking.
“Do you see that light? That’s where you’re going. Just follow that light. We’re with you. Let’s go!”
