Mission Trip | The Morganton Years
After a ten-day mission trip, I had gotten all my youth group, except for one, through security at the Atlanta airport. John was still waiting in security, and I could see that, based on the face of the man behind the security scanner, a problem was developing. The belt had stopped, and he was looking intently at the screen. The man then waved another security official over. He reversed the belt, and both of them looked intently at the screen. As an experienced youth group leader, I knew immediately that this was not a good sign. I hustled over to where John was waiting and arrived just in time to hear the security official say, “Son, do you know you have a sword in your bag?” John, with a bright smile and an affirmative nod, corrected the official, “It’s a machete!” This buoyant, honest answer disarmed the official, because he burst out in a laugh and said, “Son, you’re not allowed to carry a machete through an airport.”
There is behind the Atlanta airport an alleyway, a corrugated metal wall and a razor wire fence that conjoin at a vanishing point on the distant horizon. In 1995 a large duffle bag with a machete in it flew out from the corrugated metal wall about a mile down said alleyway and about fifty yards in front of a church van filled with young people.
When Jesus sent out his disciples on a mission trip, he charged them to take nothing for their journey – no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but if you happen to have a machete…