follow

**First, congratulations to (drumroll, please)...
Sabrina! Thanks to random.org, your comment was selected as the winner :0)

Shoot me an email at ajkilbourn(at)hotmail(dot)com...you know all the usual tricks here to keep the bots from spamming me nonstop! We'll connect and figure out just how I can make your word "intentional" into something you can look at as a reminder this year.**



And now, the rest of the story...

My word last year was faithful, and if you look back at my introduction to that word a year ago you'll see that one of the first stories that popped into my head was Peter stepping out of the boat in faith, amidst the crashing waves. It seemed Peter kept popping up after that, too...I guess maybe I'm drawn to those hard-headed, passionate, stubborn guys...but I digress.


This year I struggled to find a word for 2013. I read other "One Word" posts, hoping maybe somebody else's word would jump out at me. When that didn't work, and December was over, I started thinking that maybe I wasn't going to have a word this year.


Then I "stumbled on" a post by a man I greatly respect from our church in Russellville, Dr. Morris Inch. The writing was full of little nuggets, kind of his reflection back over 2012, but towards the end one thought jumped out at me: Jesus is the Way.

Hmm.


Thinking back right now, I couldn't tell you exactly what Dr. Inch said (though I highly recommend you hop over and read his words!). As is often the case for me my mind took off on a tangent path, the original thought forgotten.

This time, the first thing that came to mind was "Followers of the Way." Paul tells us that that is what the early believers were called. I did a quick internet search and first came across a couple of strange cult pages...
so I did what I should have done first and opened my Bible for a quick search through the index, looking at the word follow.

I"ll give you a guess as to whose name came up...
yup.
Here comes Peter again!

The first and last words that Jesus spoke to Peter (at least of those recorded for us in the Bible)?
"Come, follow Me." (Mark 1:17)
"Follow Me!: (John 21:17-19)

Huh. That's interesting...
Peter, this stubborn guy who jumps out of boats and who denies even knowing this "Jesus" guy when things get hard.

Knowing everything about Peter, knowing how hard-headed and passionate and stubborn and explosive he can be, Jesus simply says, "follow."

I said earlier that I seem to be drawn to guys like Peter. Well, maybe that's because I'm kind of a female version of him (Petra, maybe?).

So, knowing what I'm going to face in 2013,
and knowing every 
stubborn

     hard-headed

             explosive

                 passionate

aspect of my personality, this year Jesus simply says to me, "Follow."

This should be interesting...