A Personal Struggle

I am in the midst of my own slightly past mid-life crisis as I confront the biblical ideal versus the day to day reality of my spiritual journey.  I think everyone comes face to face with this crisis point more than once in their journey.  The biblical ideal constantly bombards me as I listen to Christian radio, to bible preachers with a secure ministry, and to those whose lives are pretty well settled out and secure and love to remind me that God has a wonderful plan for my life and I just need to wait on His perfect timing and way.  But what I struggle with is this internal conflict.  I believe with all my heart that I have been given the spiritual gift of preaching and teaching, that I can cut to the heart of the biblical text and proclaim it in an understandable and powerful way.  This is not an inflated view of myself, too much external confirmation from unrelated third parties has proven it over the last decades of practice.  I further acknowledge that such gifts are part of the work of the Holy Spirit, a charisma from God.  But here is where the conflict begins.  I face the question daily of why God would make me thus and so and then not also give me opportunities to use the gift He so obviously put within me.  I am not arguing with the potter about why He made me this way, I'm just asking why He made me this way and then has put me in the back of the storeroom to gather dust.

My spiritual friends counsel me to wait on God's perfect timing, but my heart tells me to pursue options, to not wait for a door to open but to knock on any door that I happen to see in front of me that has a chance to open.  It must be nice to have your life's vocation fully match your spiritual expectations.  I am not yet there myself.

The Onset of Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and with it comes the message of our mortality, our separation from God, our inability to keep our end of the deal day in and day out. I was actually thinking about that on Sunday as I asked myself, "Are we called to be perfect?" Now I convinced myself that this word does indeed appear in the New Testament more than once, and the verses it is found in seem to require us to become perfect or complete. But by what measure? Most churches specifically make lists...how to eat, how to dress, how to worship, how to raise your children, what types of jobs are good, what types of music to listen to or books to read, and so on. And we are more or less perfect as we more or less conform to this master list. Other churches adopt a more biblical view but one that is almost as hard to attain to, we are to come up to the measure of the fullness that is found in Christ. But while he was the son of man, he was also the Son of God and I think that gave him a distinct advantage over me. The whole debate over whether Jesus could have sinned since He had a full human nature is one that goes over the top. And there is also the tendency to then reduce the measure of our lives into just another list, this time what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commended, what Jesus avoided. And once again we find ourselves making checks next to an impossible list of requirements.

But it never seemed like Jesus struggled against sin. Oh, he had his moments of temptation, and even what appeared to be anguish over the path that lay ahead. But the majority of His life seems more to be about doing what it is that the Father set before him, and not agonizing over this or that circumstance or possible temptation, what the church used to call the "near occasion of sin." And that gave me the "theme" for my Lenten devotions this year. I am not going to struggle against my own sinfulness, I always fall short of my expectations and certainly of "perfection". But what I am going to do is struggle to hear God more clearly, to see where He is present and what He is doing, and to try to do that one thing that He sets before me in each day. It starts with that bold statement of Isaiah, "Here I am, send me" as God was looking for someone to go on His behalf. I think that if I can half succeed in turning my attention to what God would have me do in the moment, that any struggle against sin will enjoy progress as well. Blessings upon your Lenten pilgrimage.