Friday, August 21, 2009

Rites of Passage

We don't have many healthy rites of passage in our culture.

Luke enters high school next week . . . a big deal.

These guys who are my friends, and Luke's friends, helped me last night as we had a ceremony of sorts on the beach.

Each of them has had significant spiritual influence on Luke and they individually walked Luke down the beach about half a mile (and he didn't know about this prior to me dropping him off) and talked too him about a godly value/attribute and how they were expecting God to do great things in his life.

Then they handed him off to the next guy.

I was last and we talked about his unlimited future for the Kingdom and fulfilling the meaning of his name ('Bringer of Light').

Afterwards we all had some 'man food' at Rudy's . . . and talked about how we are all there for him.

My hope is that my son not only hears the wise counsel of his mentors, but also the affirmation of him as a man of God. We all need that blessing to move confidently into God's future.


"You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." (2 Timothy 2:1-2)

5 comments:

Julie said...

I really like this idea and the eternal value of it, especially sending a boy off into adventures.

Thank you for sharing. And praying for Luke's light to be shining very bright.

Greg Richmond said...

Awesome!

josh said...

Hi you dont know me. I was wondering if by chance your wifes name was Cindy? My name is Josh Bradshaw I live in AZ and my email is jbradshaw6@gmail.com and has been for 3 years now. As of late I have been getting emails from redbox saying I rented movies in Corpus Christi. I have also just received emails from a woman named Brittnay who is a photographer about taking pics for a senior in high school. I am trying to get this cleared up and when I searched this 361-993-2415 it came up with results for John T Bradshaw. If this is you and Cindy is your wife I would hope we could resolve the issue of mixing up email addresses. Please send me a message back you can either email me at jbradshaw6@gmail.com or yeeshy85@hotmail.com I would really apprecaite it. Thanks!

Jade said...

wow! haha :) great post John. And hopefully you guys can fix the email mix-up ;)

Mommy of 2 and 2 said...

What an awesome thing to do for Luke!! What a blessing for him to have so many godly men pouring in to him!! AWEsome!!!