Today was the last day of a week's "stay-cation" for me. I posed as a "drop-off" parent, leaving my kids in their normal Sunday school classes where my wife would pick them up later. Then, I drove across town to worship with a congregation that I've wanted to visit for a number of years, Evergreen Foursquare. A few minor obstacles nearly tempted me to stay home, but I am grateful that the nudging to go was strong enough to ignore those temptations.
I happened to visit on the day that the congregation was observing "Pastor-Appreciation Day" - an opportunity that comes around each October. I felt truly blessed to watch as two faithful witnesses to the gospel and their families were thanked in words and symbolic gifts, and I was reminded of those who've gone out of their way at times to affirm my service and calling.
As the worship leaders lead in song--and relieved of my normal leader-responsibilities--it was refreshing to close my eyes, and abide in a place that Christ promised to be: where people had gathered in his name. On occasion, in my own congregation I get lost in the song or in real worship, but what a gift to be a part of the larger flock for a little while. And then, I was able to receive a message that encouraged and spoke to me.
The message included a heart-felt reminder of the gifts, dangers, joys and struggles of pastoral mininstry. One of the points Pr. Doug lifted up is our human desire to "fix" people and their relationships. For pastors, "the veil that hides family life is lifted," he said, and we are honored to be with people in the midst of their joys, births, baptisms, marriages, struggles, tragedies, divorces, deaths, etc.
Sometimes the struggles can seem to outweigh the joys. Into this God sends some of us, and we get the idea that we are called to lead and fix and resolve. Many times we are, or at least we feel, inadequate to the task. We don't help save all marriages, we don't raise the dead. Relationships with God in our families and congregations don't grow on linear plot-lines. There are seasons. God's Spirit must fill the spaces that we necessarily leave.
I especially appreciated it when he suggested that the gift of marriage comes not only from seeing how it may reflect our relationship with God, but also how it contrasts. Marriages sometimes reveal how, even in this most intimate human relationship, we are not able to be and provide everything that another being needs. We cannot fill every need. We cannot be Savior for each other.
Pr. Doug also reminded us that the way God's Spirit works in peoples' lives, and in my life, has to be seen over the long-haul. There peaks and valleys. The Spirit connects and fills them. And even then, I am not measured. I am not measured by doings and accomplishments.
Nor are you. You are not measured according to how well you held it together, by your inadequacies, or your successes. You are measured by God's love for you. Through Christ, this is a love that joined you in life, in death, and in resurrection. With him, as I've recently heard, the cup is not half-empty or half-full. He fills it.
