53+ years ago, I married Deanna, a young woman I had met two years earlier, just a few days before we both graduated from High school. It was kind of like the old comment, "We went to different high schools together." Her school was some 25 miles away. We met at the skating rink here in our present home town. That building is now a paint store and a Chiropractor's office.
Deanna's mom wanted her three daughters at the skating rink every Saturday evening; sometimes on Fridays as well. It took a few years before I could get my mother-in-law to tell me how it was that they brought the girls in every week; not that I objected the fact. It was simple. She didn't want them dating boys from their home community. She really didn't trust them.
I've always been glad I met my wife for many reasons; our sons, our lives together and more. Right up at the top of my reasons for being glad is the fact that our romance and marriage led me to The Mennonite Church.
I was raised in a very "conservative" church that annually send thousands upon thousands of dollars over-seas to support missionaries places with indigenous Christian people who could have taught us more about Jesus than we ever have taught them. After all, some of the places were right where the Christian Church actually first began; places like Palestine, even Egypt where the Apostle Thomas formed probably the first Christian Church outside of Palestine. However, for all of the money we spent on foreign missions, that church had virtually no emphasis on carrying even a loaf of bread across the street to a needy neighbor -- especially if that neighbor wasn't a member of our own congregation or a sister church in the denomination.
I would often ask about that dis-synchronicity, but I my questions always were often answered with reprimands for questioning the doctrines, or with such as "You'll just have to pray about it."
So it was that in the final weeks of my High School Senior year I was seeking a better set of answers, although I didn't yet understand that I was looking for something totally different for a church. When we married just over two years after we met, we kind of experimented by alternately attending the denomination of my youth and a near-by Mennonite Church.
It didn't take long before I understood that HER church was the answer to those prayers I had been admonished to pray. Just a few months after our marriage, I experienced the joyful mission of helping clean up flood damage about 150 miles from our home. Finally, I had found the opportunity to carry that loaf of bread to a "nearby" someone in need. I had found an opportunity to be in mission here at home.
Years passed before I ever again attended the congregation of my high school youth. I ultimately became educated to a Master of Divinity degree from a Mennonite Seminary. While I never became a pastor, I have been in mission somehow ever since I became Mennonite. I've never gone overseas, and seldom have I even had to go across state lines to serve others. I seldom "preach" in ways that others think of, but I have had more joy in offering just that "cup of water" or loaf of bread to someone -- Christian or non-Christian -- who is in a painful situation.
There was a story I heard early in our marriage about St. Francis of Assisi (I believe). He took a younger brother at the monastery on a trip into town to preach about Jesus. They walked in one side of town, then to the opposite side and returned without stopping and without any exchange of words. As they were leaving town to return to the monastery, the younger brother said, "Brother Francis, I thought we were going to town to preach about Jesus? When do we start?"
St Francis replied simply, "We just did."
Now, 53 years later I am still married to Deanna, and I am still Mennonite.
