Just a few blocks from my office at Point University, in West Point, Georgia, is a historic site known as Fort Tyler. The claim to fame of Fort Tyler is that some say it was the site of the final battle of the Civil War. Today it is a beautiful, quiet site surrounded by massive hardwood trees. I often go there to read, pray, and just sit around and soak in Creation’s beauty.
But on 16 April 1865, it was anything but quiet. There was a huge battle where seven Union soldiers were killed and 29 seriously wounded. Nineteen Confederate soldiers were killed and 28 wounded. At the end of the day, when the battle ended, 218 Confederates were imprisoned. General Robert G. Tyler, for whom the fort is named, is said to be the last Confederate general killed in battle.
Tragically, news had not reached West Point, Georgia, that on 9 April 1865, within a day or two of 156 years ago, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his armies to General Ulysses S. Grant. A week after that surrender, unaware that the war had finally ended, 26 humans lost their lives, 57 were seriously wounded, and over 200 were captured.
I enjoy reading Scripture and praying in that quiet, peaceful spot, but is hard to go there and not think about what an unnecessary loss of life occurred there just a week after the surrender.
It is easy to point fingers at that tragic failure to know the war had ended. But I wonder sometimes if we aren’t a bit like “the walking dead” and “the tragically wounded,” because we also tend to have missed a message we desperately need to know.
Jesus told a very interesting story about sheep and shepherds in John 10, and right in the middle of that story, He says, “I came in order that you may have life and may have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Abundantly means something like “extraordinary, remarkable, profuse.” If I were paraphrasing this verse, I might say something like “way more than you can imagine.” How does this sound: “I came that you may have life – and have life in ways you can’t even imagine”?
In the midst of a complicated life, if we aren’t careful, we end up setting for the routine and expected, when Jesus can offer the extraordinary and remarkable.
In the midst of a complicated life, if we aren’t careful, we end up settling for the routine and expected, when Jesus can offer the extraordinary and remarkable. Is it possible that getting back to “normal” as the pandemic ends (we hope!) could be a sure way to settle for the routine, when investment in the “new normal” could be a means to recommit to a new way of life abundant?
In its context in the John 10 story, it appears we need to work out the sheep and shepherd routines of our lives. We need to commit to following the Good Shepherd – the exemplary one who authentically shows us what life is like. We need to “know His voice” and trust His leading us out to pasture – nurture. But the last thing we need to do is settle to be a “hireling,” when His model as the Good Shepherd is to lay down His life for His sheep.
Is it possible that our willingness “to die for the sheep” around us could be a huge path toward extraordinary and remarkable: a life beyond the stretch of our imaginations?
Sometimes the person I look at in the mirror every morning is tempted to settle for the mundane. Mundane can be easier than remarkable. But, like the soldiers at Fort Tyler who, 156 years ago, fought a battle that they did not need to fight, a battle of no real consequence – the mundane life is fraught with such worthless battles.
Take Jesus at His word. He came that all of His children could have life abundant. That can change everything.
Wye Huxford 