Teachers and Preachers

I always knew my grandfather on my mother’s side had been a pastor, but I just learned that his father was too. And he ran an orphanage.

At this point, it’s just a small matter of family lore, but you can be sure it mattered then. And who knows what influence for good he had on the people he touched?

And maybe whole family lines.

Speaking of family lines, a moment of reflection reveals an interesting coincidence of teachers and preachers in ours.

It was Anne who first recognized how mine seems to be a family of teachers. Among my four siblings all are teachers, or have been, both by education and occupation.

At mid-life, after a useful career teaching children, my brother Steve went back to school and became a pastor. Now retired, he still teaches music privately.

Then there’s my sister’s husband, Leonard. Though he held a PhD in music composition, at mid-life he also went back to seminary and became a pastor. He now leads an established Lutheran church in Chicago.

Our daughter Acacia’s very smart husband Mark left a fine writing career, moved to Chicago, and started a thriving church downtown.

I’m just now seeing this, how we have all these teachers and preachers in the mix. It’s not that I’m elevating these vocations above others. I’m equally pleased with the career choices of everyone in this wide family. And I believe God is as well, the giver of each of their gifts.

Still, I find it at least worth noting the abundance of this particular fruit on this tree, and how far back go the roots . . . not just to my mother’s father, but his.

Is it coincidence?

Maybe there should be a teaching on that.

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PS I drafted this blog before knowing I’ll be speaking the next two Sundays, at different churches. This week, Capo Beach Church, the following, Heritage Christian Fellowship.
Another coincidence?

PPS Recent posts on Vernon’s progress are here.