You Need a Butt Kicker
The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head. – William Cowper
A Jethro is wild and crazy about you, believes in you, and cares enough about you to wake and shake you up to dream big and live large.
A Jethro is a blesser, not a flatterer
A Jethro tells you to live life with both brain and backbone
A Jethro is probably smarter than you
A Jethro is someone outside you regular faith community
The story of Moses meeting Jethro is found in Exodus 2. The story of Jethro sending Moses is found in Exodus 4. Jethro was Moses’ father-in-law who ‘blessed him forward’ into the mission God has placed upon Moses’ life with the enigmatic saying ‘Go to Peace.’ Jethro was a Midianite High Priest…a kind of Bedouin prophet…who refused to let Moses grow comfortable with his life of seclusion in the desert.
When Jethro sends Moses on his way out into the mission that God had called him to, he uses a very particular Hebrew phrase. Often, when we say goodbye to someone, we say ‘Go in peace.’ Jethro says ‘Go to peace.’
Len Sweet talks about ‘Go in peace’ being the blessing of death and ‘Go to peace’ being the blessing of life. The ‘peace’ spoken of in Jethro’s blessing is not ‘peace and quiet’. The life of faith is not the life of peace and quiet…not for Moses, not for Jesus, and not for us.
This ‘peace’ is the peace-making sense of shalom, the channeling of energies that bring wholeness and wellness to the world. One of the most powerful things you can do is to bless someone forwards. When you’re spiritually neutered, or when you become complacent and complaisant, or when you shrink from your mission…you need a Jethro to wake you up and tell you to ‘go to peace’.
You can’t BE AT PEACE until you GO TO PEACE.
Journal Questions:
Have you had a Jethro in your life? Did you recognize them as such when you did?
Who are people who are good ‘blessers’ in your life? How do they help you to bless others?
Has a Jethro helped you at a spiritual turning point in your life?
What does ‘going to peace’ look like in your life?