Who is Your Yoda?

I took a break last week from my ‘Connections’ series but I wanted to come back to it this week with a simple question – Who is your Yoda? For those who may not know, although I really don’t know how this might be possible – Yoda is a 3 feet tall green Jedi Master from the Star Wars series of movies. He is a wise sage, a mentor, a teacher and trainer to many young Jedi hopefuls. Luke Skywalker was one of those young Jedi warriors who had to be taken aside, separated from the group and trained one on one by Yoda, by the master Jedi.

So again, my young padawans (Jedi apprentices), “Who is your Yoda?”

Who is it that you look up to for advice, for guidance, for encouragement, for correction, for mentorship? This does not need to be a formal thing, occasionally it is, it just needs to happen. We so often attempt to go through life on our own without looking for help or assistance because we fear appearing weak or unable to cope. I think we should just be honest with each other and admit that there are certain things in each of our lives that we are unable to cope with – it is in these areas that we need a Yoda. I would like to throw another myth out the window too today, our Yoda can be younger than us. Somewhere along the way we have bought into the idea that to be a mentor or a guide we must be old – and while age does bring experience and a certain degree of wisdom that youth lacks, it does not always qualify a person for being a Yoda. There are many younger people whom I can learn from and look to for advice, for direction and for mentorship. This doesn’t mean that I look to them in every aspect of my life – but I look for people who are wiser or more experienced than me in different areas of life and I try to learn from them. I search out Yoda’s wherever I can.

When I was growing up my mother will tell you that I never got into trouble for the same things my older brother got into trouble for. I learned that if it didn’t work for him then it probably wouldn’t work for me – so I never tried that. I found new things to get into trouble for, but from an early age I watched what other people did and tried to learn from them. Nothing has changed – except sometimes now I will try something that has been done before, I will just do it in a slightly different way.

As we look at the bible we see a number of different Yoda characters in the New Testament – namely the apostle Paul. Paul’s rise to this position did not just take place with his name change, no, he started his journey to mentor at an early age as he studied the scriptures to become a Pharisee. Through these early years of dedication Saul buried the truth in his heart that at a later date Jesus would unlock and use to build His kingdom. Saul didn’t completely forget his former life following his conversion, he used the things from his former life for God’s glory. You might be just like that. There may be things in your former (pre-Christ) life that you studied hard at, or learned and yet have set aside thinking that they would never be used for Him. Maybe it is time for some of us to use the knowledge and wisdom that God gave us before we met Him to build His kingdom and become a Yoda to someone else. Paul had many apprentices, from Timothy, Barnabas, John Mark, Onesimus – he was always pouring into someone’s life and passing on his knowledge. Maybe we should do that too.

For every Yoda, there has to be a Padawan (an apprentice). I think that we all instantly put ourselves in this category and rightly so. No one is perfect, not even one and no one person has all the answer (even though many think they do, myself included at times). But we all need to look for people who we can spend time with, who we can be honest with, whom we can learn from, who we can shadow and apprentice with. There are also a number of us who need to allow others to become apprentices to us. This sounds like a haughty statement, but there are many of us who could take on and develop a relationship with another member of the church that will love, nurture, care for and mentor that other person. Some of us Yoda’s need to step out of the shadows and share our experience, share our passions and share our lives with some eager students. I keep telling my college students that as long as I am 10 pages ahead of them in knowledge then I have something to teach them, and they have something to learn.

So, are you a Padawan to a Yoda or are you a Yoda to a Padawan? Or are you both?