Don't know if anyone reads this very often, but if you do you might notice that I have been quiet. I've been experiencing life. Which means its been a bit of a mixture of ups and downs and decisions. Being quiet is good, normally I'm impatient to make a decision and force people to abide by it!
I think I've left my "Christian" teen years where being impulsive and passionate is slowly giving away to a more matured response. And also a realisation that all of the communities that we serve and serve us can only take us so far. And sometimes they don't take us where we need to go at all. Sooner or later as we mature we realise that all the best advice in the world is just a perspective and like all perspectives there really isn't a right or wrong.
So how does one make decisions in this space? Well, as a Christian I look for guidance in Scripture - and that's tough. Because I know what "should" be happening based on Scripture. But I also know what may happen if I follow it. It seems that my role so often in this new life has been to not go with the flow of the river, but to slow the flow, frustrate it. But a river keeps moving quickly along once it gets past the disruption. Its the rock in the river that ends up yielding bit by bit by the continual battering.
Not a good frame of mind for ministry. And it has crossed my mind that this all seems futile and the first advice of not going into ministry was maybe the best I ever received. But then I take a breath and go back to Scripture. In a post modern mind it is very hard to remember to follow "Truth". There are so many truths that are false promises. But I remind myself that if I don't believe that Scripture is different then I've already left ministry. I have no idea where I am going career wise. I know I have had an influence in my small way in my arenas, I pray that it was for the glory of God. But I still feel stuck, not going with the flow means not fitting in at church, not going with all the advice that I have been given - most of it conflicting anyway.
This is the best time of year to have this reflection. I am preaching at the nursing home on Sunday (hopefully no one will scream out "I want to die" this time) and I am preaching on that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Easter in a nursing home seems like a place to preach hope without really engaging in the reality of the congregation. But the passage is for me as much as for them. Rather than the sugar coated messages of candy filled filled mouths is the other side of Easter - that the darkest places are still in the light. That we are not forgotten, that we are not and can never be separated from the love of God. That sometimes the only comfort we have in our bodies and our spirit is this promise. Without Easter, nothing is bearable.
That's why I like the photo up top - taken "borrowed" from a friend's collection of work. Its sunrise and the light casts promise of more light, the trees will become clearer, the snow will melt to reveal the landscape more clearly. There is more than I can see now.
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