My Burgundy Carpet Moment...

Saturday night I glanced down at the carpet under my feet-Burgundy.  A little too Familiar.  I was transported back to another burgundy carpet. More than 26 years ago, I soaked that carpet with my tears and probably a little bit of snot too.  It was youth convention.  The altars were flooded so some of us teens were forced to the stage to pray.  I was on my knees in as tight of a ball that I could manage with my forehead glued to the carpet.  On that burgundy carpet, I encountered God.  He was real, tangible, and breathing-on-me-close.  My mind has often rewound me back to that moment when I was branded for life and called to reach the broken for the rest of my life.  This would-be-engineer bound for Virginia Tech was pivoting and would stun her teachers and school counselors with the unconventional choices she was about to make.

Saturday night as I stared at the burgundy carpet, I thought of what had transpired since my first “burgundy carpet moment.”  Wife, mom, 4 kids, pastor, presbyter.  Yet this moment smelled and looked so much the same.  Staring at burgundy carpet, wetting it with my tears.  Him breathing-on-me close.  So much has changed - or has it?  I looked around me and saw students having their “burgundy carpet moments,” and I was overcome with the realization that this could be the first for them.  Could this moment make them pivot and change the trajectory of their lives forever?  In 26 years would they glance backward at this moment and remember it as The Moment?

Later we sat in a circle and these precious students confirmed that they indeed had “burgundy carpet moments.”  They were pivoting and the world would know it.  Maybe their career paths weren’t changing, but their hunger to follow hard after the man from Galilee was.  This had been an I-will-never-forget night for many.  We smushed ourselves in for a group hug at the end - a bunch of healed, called, forgiven followers branded by our “burgundy carpet moment." Sometimes I can’t believe this is the life I get to live all because of a pivot I made 26 years ago.