Tim Bohlke » // writings

Remember

A few years ago, just before Harbor Ministry was launched, there was this moment…

I was on top of a mountain looking out over Quito, Ecuador. I was there to speak at a conference of youth ministry leaders from around the world, on what it takes to finish well. The crazy thing was, at the time I felt like my personal life and my leadership life were crashing down. My spiritual life was empty. I wasn’t sure I was going to stay on this faith journey at all. How could I deliver a message to these youth leaders on what it looks like to finish well? I just didn’t think I had what it takes to speak to the men who had gathered there. Everything in me wanted to bolt, and if I hadn’t been in South America, I may have.

Yet somehow in that moment clarity began to come. I decided to be bluntly honest and raw. As the hours passed, I had a very strong sense that I did have something to say, that my voice was needed, and I began to settle in.

Thoughts started coming. I need to help each of the men who had gathered in South America to remember:

  • To remember the calling and mission that God had given each of them in the first place.
  • To remember the key times in their own stories when God had broken through.
  • To remember why they were doing the work and to reconnect with that initial calling.
  • To remember the joy that was present in the early days of their spiritual journeys.

The night I spoke to those men was an incredible time of storytelling, and some moments of healing, restoration, and remembrance that I will never forget.

So, I am reminded again how powerful remembering can be. We must remember the places, the spaces, and the moments where God has intersected our own stories. Today it has kept me inspired, and I find myself wanting more of it. This thought comes to mind: “It is a good thing for the man that patiently waits, for the women who diligently seeks, It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Wait for hope to appear.” Lamentations 3:28-29, The Message.

So all these years after that incredible trip to equator—a trip that in many ways changed the trajectory of my life—I again have this ache to find some extended quiet and to remember…

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