Monthly Archives: September 2013

Living Gifted

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Most mornings, the easiest thing for me to do would be to curl up and stay out of sight for the day, much like my hamster does in her toilet paper roll hide-out.

I love brainstorming and dreaming big and flinging color into life.  But most of my ideas and ideals get so muddied up in the reality of living that I get tired of even trying again, so I respond by wanting to hide.

I want to hide when I’ve failed again. Snapped at someone. Gossiped. Let circumstances determine my behavior. I won’t say more here because this is not a public confessional, but believe me, it gets ugly. Those living closest to me know.

Sometimes all I can see are my failures, the past with all the blotches and blemishes.

But living with regret and hiding means living without grace.

And if there were no grace, no eraser of mistakes, no forgiveness, I would go out and kill myself.

But there is marvelous, infinite, matchless grace. Free. Poured out. Lavished on all creation. The past is in the past, covered, gone, for every repentant. This is what my friend reminded me of this summer, and she’s right.

“You are so, so gifted,” she said. She meant that I’ve been given so much–everything I have has been given, and mustn’t be denied or clenched tightly.

If I live as though my failures (and others’) are too big to release, it is to say that Jesus death wasn’t enough to satisfy God’s wrath, as if His grace isn’t as big as He said.  Which would be living in unbelief, and God has stern words for that kind of person. And I don’t want Jesus’ death to have been in vain, because I do love Him awfully, awfully much.

So I’m taking baby steps toward living in grace. It feels presumptuous to even say it but it’s true. Grace is charis, a gift given from a source outside ourselves, something to embrace and share, not try to produce it or hide from it.

Taking that gift with open hands is the only way to really live.

The Secret Life of Ministry

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“So, what’s your ministry?”

She asked me this as we got acquainted at a Christian writer’s weekend.

“I work in a store,” I said.

But as soon as I’d said it, I saw it was the wrong answer. I was supposed to have said I’m leading women’s groups, or mentoring teens, or writing music, or teaching mentally handicapped children or something else amazing and important. This country bumpkin just said what her job was.  That’s not ministry.

Or is it?

That vignette often replays itself in my mind , even though it was years ago, and I still feel the tension of the lady’s unasked questions. I often feel the tug of war between doing what’s labelled as ministry and just doing the next thing that needs doing. The labels and expectations of public service for God countered with the hidden, thankless reality of service. The praise that’s poured out on numbers and responses, and the silence that accompanies faithfulness and setbacks.

Jesus saved us, Paul said,  so that we wouldn’t live for ourselves but for Him.  I suggest that, just as submission isn’t submission until we disagree, ministry isn’t ministry until it’s forgetful of self, or until it cuts across the grain of our bent to look out for me, me, me and keep ourselves comfy.

There might be a place for styled hair and sound amplifiers and  whitened teeth and glossy posters and impressive numbers of followers. But it seems to me that Jesus’ kind of ministry has more to do with dusty feet and glasses of water and holding children.  Or saying ‘hello’ and smiling at a bus driver. Or changing the trash cans at church.

Ministry isn’t reserved for the ones who have it all together, the ones who’ve built their platform, the ones who have a dramatic story to tell the world. Ministry is for every person who has walked across the line to the Kingdom of Light and wants to serve the King from sheer gratitude and awe at being rescued from the Dark Side.

Because Jesus the Servant is our hero, and this is the upside-down kingdom where the last becomes first. Where, with God’s mysterious exchange, the cracked ones are the healed ones, and the most light comes from those who are most broken.

I find this both convicting and comforting.