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My 3 year old son Jonah loves tractors. He is always asking to watch YouTube videos about tractors, playing with toy tractors, changing the oil in his big toy tractor, doing tractor puzzles, wearing tractor clothes and asking his daddy and grandpa to ride a tractor whenever he is in relatively close proximity to a tractor. He asks me all the time how old does he have to be to drive a tractor.

Now, he isn’t necessarily a fan of just any tractor. He specifically loves John Deere tractors. We drive by a massive John Deere store in Circleville, Ohio when we drive up to visit our family in Michigan. They have a lot of big agricultural equipment and he gets so excited about it when we drive by. When we went to the fair in the fall, by far his favorite thing to do was to go sit on all the tractors (even if they aren’t John Deere) and ask “what this do?”  

If you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up one day, he will tell you that he wants to be a mechanic and work on tractors. This boy is crazy about tractors.

Jill was talking to him one day after he did something particularly cute, and she told him that she wanted him to stay her little baby forever. He looked back up at her and said, “No! Me have to get big so I can drive tractor!” It’s as if he is saying, if he can’t grow up and drive a tractor one day, then what has this all of this been about? What is the point of life if he can’t drive a tractor one day? He sees driving a tractor as the ultimate goal and when he is wearing his John Deere shirt and working on his toy John Deere tractor with his John Deere tools, he thinks he is doing what he can do now to prepare himself to drive a tractor one day.

It’s easy for us as grown adults to see the flaws in his logic here. Obviously he has a greater purpose in life than to drive a tractor, even if it is cute and I am hesitant to correct him for the time being.

I have to say though, it has made me think... I wonder if God has similar thoughts about us sometimes? I doubt any of you would say that you truly believe your purpose in life is to be a religious supporter of your favorite sports team. Or to get promoted to that dream job to wield power and make an unimaginable amount of money. Or to be a social media influencer to the masses. Or to own your dream home and show it off to your family and friends all the time. Or to be the premier consumer of the best books, tv shows and movies. 

If I take a honest look at my calendar and think about the things that I always make time for and then compare that to my “to-do list” and look at what has been sitting on there for months and months (or let’s be real, maybe years) I think we may find that the things in life we find purpose in aren’t that different from Jonah’s tractors.

I just switched over from using the normal calendar app on my phone to using Google Calendar in the last several months (which was a chore by the way). One thing I stumbled upon in that process, that isn’t really new but I had just never really utilized before, was subscribing to calendars that aren’t default to your phone. Thanks to this realization, I now have all of my soccer events, meetings, doctor appointments, kids schedules, church activities, the NASCAR schedule and Arsenal FC game schedule all in one place. It’s beautiful. No more switching back and forth from the ESPN app to my calendar to see if I have a soccer event conflicting with an Arsenal game. It’s all right there together.

But what does that say about what I value and choose to spend my time doing? Don’t hear what I’m not saying here, watching sports is not a bad thing and you should pull for your favorite teams if that’s your thing, but if we build our weekends around watching sports are we not taking that a bit far?

Doing your job well and using your God given talents and abilities in your career is a great thing. But maybe obsessing over proving your worth to your boss so you can get that raise or promotion or not finding an appropriate work-life balance that suits your family well is not only unhealthy, but suggests a bit of a disconnect with what you likely claim your life’s purpose to be and what you devote your time, thoughts and energy to.

The same can be said for social media, consuming books, shows or movies, or fill in the blank for you. We all devote too much time and energy to things that I can only imagine God finds just as silly as we find Jonah’s determination to one day drive a tractor. 

This obviously begs the question, what are we missing out on. What is the thing we aren’t making time for on our calendars? I’d say that is a hard thing to pin down in a simple statement, but let’s give it a go. We were created to be in relationship with God. Sin separates us from God and strains that relationship, but Jesus came to create a way to the Father for us. We are to be followers of Jesus and look at what Jesus’ relationship to His Father looked like and how He loved others and then do our best to imitate that. Another way to think about that is we ought to be striving to become more like Jesus. That kind of sounds like our tag line for the theme this year, Developing24.

If you were able to make it to a Vision Night this week hopefully one of the things that stuck out to you was the vision to become a church of disciples who make disciples. In other words, a student of Christ who brings others along to be students as well. Sounds a little like our new mission statement, “Helping people find and follow Jesus.” (Kind of sounds like Matthew 28:18-20 as well.)

God created us to be relational. Too often we think being more spiritual or growing closer to God is an individual journey we are on. But we were made in the image of a relational God who not only wants us to be in relationship with Him, but in relationship with others.  

Patrick talked about the idea of Communitas at the Vision Nights this week. That simply means a community with a mission. It is easy to see this in sports. Teams have a common goal they are all fighting for. There is power in that unity and bond that is formed around that common goal. But what better purpose of a community of people could there be than to become disciples of Jesus together. To learn what it means to be like Jesus and bring others along for the ride.

The way this purpose plays out in each of our lives will look different from person to person. In a lot of cases, it will even include those things that we mistakenly prioritize in our lives like our jobs, sports teams, homes, social media etc. because all of those things can be vehicles to connect with people you wouldn’t otherwise be able to. Or you will utilize your gifts/passions/abilities to accomplish things and impact people in ways only you can.

Just like on a sports team, everyone plays a different position and has different responsibilities because everyone brings something different to the table. But everyone is still working toward the same goal.

What is your tractor? What can you do to become more like Jesus this week? And how can you be a part of that Communitas that Patrick talked about? Maybe that is in a small group or ministry team. There are some great opportunities to get involved and build relationships with others in both of those areas at Bridges. But maybe it isn’t at Bridges, and that is okay too. Maybe it is at work, or a friend group, or parachurch organization you work with. Just don’t do it alone.