You may have many reasons to be frustrated. Let God give you His perspective… let Him give you a renewed and refreshed heart.

It’s Just Another Monday…

 It’s 10:30 Monday morning, and Chicken Little was right all along…the sky is falling. Not in its entirety, but significant chunks are coming down.

It began yesterday morning when our Children’s Director told me that two elementary Sunday School teachers wanted a year’s sabbatical from their classes. That evening I received a call at home from the Logans. They are proceeding with the divorce, in spite of four months of intense counseling. Hanging up the phone I remembered that I had forgotten to close the side door of the church before the twelve-mile drive home. It had been propped open to get rid of the smoke caused by the brief kitchen fire while the teens were baking cookies for the missions project. Fortunately for me the panhandler in the alley hadn’t tried the door and so all he got was $3.00 from me.

This morning, however, I noticed the sky was cracking! Shortly after six I received a phone call from a former parishioner who had moved to the East Coast. He asked me whether his spiritual gifts should be listed on his new resume. (He forgot about the time zone difference.) His phone call was followed by a quick shower and the twelve-mile trip to the church via the bagel shop. The young girl who waited on me recognized my occupation and asked if I would marry she and her boyfriend. Three ministers had already turned her down. Oh, boy!

At church, the secretary told me that I’d already received two calls from Frank Pritchard. I had assumed he would call. The variety we try to offer in our worship time had evidently crossed his line that separates proper from improper, sacred from profane and lively from blasphemy. We’ve had similar conversations in the past. In our conversation I kept the fact that yesterday’s service wasn’t all that special to me, either.

As I sat at my desk on the phone, I glanced outside to see if any of the sky had begun falling. And in that reflective moment one of my predecessors came to mind. The sky had fallen on Moses on numerous occasions. I found his words fitting neatly into the setting in which I found myself.

“Why have you brought this trouble on your servant?

What have I done to displease you

 that you put the burden of all these people on me?”

Exodus 11:11 NIV

That’s when I realized that the sky wasn’t falling. Stuff had just bunched up a bit…had come at the wrong time. But it all was a part of ministry. The good, the bad and the ugly. And while you celebrate the good and try to ignore the ugly, the bad is just part of the package deal that comes with the job of being a ‘shepherd.’

With that early morning phone call came the realization that my teaching had made an impact with my former parishioner. With the news of impending marital break-up came the assurance that I had faithfully planted seed and had prayed over it on many occasions. If people dug up the seed and threw it away, I wouldn’t be judged for that action. And with the trips to and from the church came the awareness that here was a place where people needed me, perhaps more than they were aware of. It was a place of investment that few in the congregation could ever conceive. The panhandler made me realize how much my family and I had to be thankful for.

And Mr. Pritchard? He reminds me that it is never easy attempting to stand somewhere between heaven and earth and explain God to mortal man. It will always be a magnificent challenge to prop open the door of worship and invite people to go in. It will constantly be God’s privilege in my life to lead the sheep that I shepherd to lead them to the fields that God sets out before them. It will be the ultimate joy at the deepest level to some day stand before the Great Shepherd and hear him say ”Well done, good and faithful servant!”