Backpacking through Joshua - Week 4

This afternoon, I was in my car on the way to a coffee shop. A friend of mine was sitting next to me. He had just received yet another dinner invitation from some "friends". His "friends" are a family that invites foreign exchange students like him to their house to tell them about their faith. They are missionaries. But my friend does not want to be part of this.

He grew up as a Christian, he regularly went to church, played in a church band, and he even did children`s ministry. Just in recent years, he started to wonder... he started to question... and he started to doubt. He studies physics and the laws of nature. He thinks that God is there, but he tries to figure out what to believe in. He says he wants to be as rational as possible. He would much rather know than believe, but right now, he is just wondering and thinking about it.... The last thing he wants is others to tell him what to believe in and what not.

So, I am not saying anything. I am just sitting there, like a stone in the Jordan. I am listening to his words and sentences wash over me. I am not a missionary. I believe people who have read the bible need to find their own way to the Lord. If I tell them what to do, try to push them, to convince them of something, they do not really want to do, then they wouldn't do it whole-heartedly. And what good is it if you bring a person, but not his heart to Jesus?

I am a stone, I don't say much. I just sit there and mark the way. I am not the way itself and I cannot carry him all the way, but I am here and I mark part of his way. Because my friend is looking for the way, he just cannot ignore me. He brings up the topic over and over again. On the way to the supermarket, when I drop him off at home after school, and now on our way to the coffee shop.

"I am just trying to figure out what to believe in." he looks at me. When we stop at a traffic light, I send him an encouraging smile: "I know you do. And I know you will find what you are looking for... I know what I believe in." He knows it, too, because he has been there before and he cannot forget it. He sees me almost every day and every day I am one of Joshua's living stones.

I really liked the fourth chapter of Joshua. Every tribe had to carry his own load. Every tribe had to risk the way through the river. Everyone of us carries a load every day. And often it is not easy and we think we will never make it through alive. But as long as we keep our eyes on the Lord we will not drown. Especially, when we are at the lowest point, when we carry the heaviest load, it is important to set a marker, so that we won't forget. Every load that we carried in the past will mark the right way. And we are not alone. We are each other's markers.
I think at the moment I am a pretty big marker on my friend's way. Even though I don't say much and don't try to convince, I kinda block the wrong turn for him.