Hello, my name is Larry, and my deepest privilege would be to accompany you on your spiritual journey. Companions along the Way is a ministry of spiritual direction. First, I would like to tell you about some of my own story so we can begin to get to know one another.
In 1968 I volunteered for the Air Force, since I already had a Private Pilot’s license and was passionately interested in aviation. I was given the job of Radio Intercept Analysis Specialist, which was one form of intelligence analysis. After tech training school, my first assignment was to Japan for two years. What a beautiful and intriguing country! From there I went to Vietnam for the remainder of my time in the Air Force. What a desolate and war-torn place that was then! Fortunately, I was not traumatized as so many Vietnam veterans were and still are. I worked in a compound the entire time I was there. Only since have I realized how dangerous and precarious my situation was. The Vietnam interruption in my life was not part of my plans, and I returned embittered by the whole experience.
After being discharged, I returned to college to finish my degree at the University of Florida. While there I had a profound encounter with Jesus Christ through the Joseph story in the Old Testament.
Years after having been sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph encountered them when they came to Egypt for food. When he revealed himself to them, he said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” I was absolutely floored! How could he say that? How could he forgive them? How did he know God meant it for good? After several days of soul-searching, I realized that Joseph understood from his own dreams that God had purpose for him.
I identified with the Joseph story because my Vietnam experience felt like being sold into slavery, and I had to go where I didn’t want to go. But then I realized that God also had purpose for me that transcended life’s unfair circumstances. One Sunday afternoon, I knelt in front of the coffee table in my living room and surrendered my life to God. That began a journey of intimate relationship with Christ. My life began to be transformed so profoundly that I could hardly recognize myself from month to month.
After a couple of years, and just before graduation, I was sitting under a pine tree in front of the library at the University of Florida. I opened my Bible to the next chapter I was going to read in the New Testament and came across these two verses: I was made a servant of the gospel by God’s special gift, which God gave me through the working of God’s power. I am less than the least of all God’s people; yet God gave me this privilege of taking to the Gentiles the Good News about the infinite riches of Christ (Ephesians 3:7-8). I experienced that moment as God’s call into ministry. This necessitated further education in seminary, where I received the Master of Divinity (MDiv) and Master of Theology (ThM) degrees. Subsequently, I was a pastor in various roles for forty-two years.
While in seminary, my beloved wife of twenty years died after years of suffering from diabetes.
Suffering and death are two of the greatest mysteries of life. It causes one to ask the deepest questions of oneself and of God. I found Christ to be a faithful friend through the whole journey, though there was much agony of soul in the process.
The stories of Vietnam and my wife’s death are two of my most significant times of suffering. They were both life-changing, and both reoriented my life perspective and my relationship with God. They were the darkest nights I ever experienced. They were the saddest, most broken-hearted, and loneliest times I’ve ever had. They also became wells of wisdom to my deepest understanding of God and God’s presence in the midst of suffering. They prepared my heart to listen and be present to the sufferings of others in God’s compassion for them.
God present is grace. God present to humankind definitively expressed in the historical person of Jesus, is the clearest expression of the character of God. In him is expressed God’s intention and nature, God’s mode and spirit of relating to human beings. God’s being is expressed in the specific historical action in Jesus Christ; and as we allow the gospel to tell us who and what God is, we discover that God is gracious love. (Thomas A Langford, Reflections on Grace, p. 17.)
How do I reconcile these and many more sufferings in life? Joseph was a symbol of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. The sufferings of Jesus Christ, offered in redemptive love, makes the most spiritual sense, offers the most comprehensive resolution, and brings the deepest transformation.
Both of the above experiences occurred by the time I was 41 years old. About halfway through my years of ministry, I began to yearn for God’s presence in the unfolding and challenging years of my second half of life.
One evening I was walking through the living room and noticed a book, “The Art of Spiritual Direction.” As I read it, it resonated with my deepest sense of calling to that ministry. To prepare I enrolled in the Spiritual Guidance program of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. At the end of two years, I received a Certificate of Completion for the ministry of Spiritual Direction.