177 -- Ministry of a Bus Driver
Tuesday in Godsfield -- Brag on a Ministry -- July 2, 2024
Today I brag on the ministry of bus driving.
Today I brag on everyone who drives or has driven a church bus, school bus, camp bus, sports event bus, day care bus, public transport bus, prison bus, you-name-it bus. Big, little, yellow, red, brown, Partridge Family decorated, modern, ancient.
Buses take people where they need to go, where they want to go, where they have to go.
Two buses will bring the Shanghai students from Washington DC to Berean Baptist this Sunday afternoon, giving them a sight of America that will not have been seen in the airplane four days earlier. The journey will show them forests and trees, mountains and hills that are not found in a city of 35 million, as Shanghai, China is.
The buses will bring them to Mansfield -- to Godsfield -- and to people that will treat them as their own; seeing them as God made them, as Jesus sees them.
Over the course of 11 days, two buses, from local ministries, will take them from Mansfield Christian and Mansfield Senior to afternoon journeys downtown, to the Ohio Bird Sanctuary, to BibleWalk Museum, to Pathfinders Farm in Hayesville, and a day trip to the BeHalt Museum in Berlin and P. Graham Dunn in Dalton.
Drivers are often overlooked because of the destination that is anticipated, but the diligence and preparation of those behind the wheel is ministry about which to brag.
"You are taking how many of other people's kids where?"
On a journey of a lifetime for some; on a journey to bless a lifetime for others; on a journey of which only God knows the outcome.
Having sought and finally found drivers for our buses, I know how blessed we are to have transportation ministers, prophets of the pedal, movement missionaries, grace guiders.
Today I brag on all who transport for the Lord, which is everyone who transports, if they know the Lord is with them.
Oh, and one other reason I am partial toward the ministry of bus drivers is that my grandfather, A. R. Lintern, nearly 100 years ago started a bus heater company that still bears his name today, in Detroit, Michigan.
No one every brags about a bus heaters, mostly complains about them, if they give them any thought, but this is a source of joy for me. I never knew my grandfather, but I know his bus heaters!
Love ya,
Paul