Today’s Readings: Psalm 137; Esther 2:5-8, 15-23; John 8:47-59; 2 Corinthians 1:8-11; Psalm 127
Featured Passage: 2 Corinthians 1:8-11. One of the most memorable times of my life occurred during the spring of 2001. Let me set that time up for you. You see just two years earlier, I had finally quit fighting my call to ministry and decided to enroll in seminary. I had narrowed my choices down to seminaries in Berkeley, CA; Chicago, IL; and Denver, CO. Whichever seminary I picked meant that I would completely uproot my life at the age of 32 – move somewhere between 870 miles (Berkeley) and 1700 miles (Chicago) – and start my life all over. I figured it would be okay to take such a risk since I had everything mapped out. In the middle of my seminary experience, however, the bottom dropped out on my plans: I was rejected as a candidate for ordained ministry in the denomination in which I was raised due to my sexual orientation. While I initially saw that as a crushing blow, over time I began to see the developments differently. In other words, I learned to see the wisdom in Paul’s words when – in speaking of the unexpected detours he had experienced in his own faith journey - he wrote: “As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally!” (2 Corinthians 8:10 from The Message). Had everything gone exactly the way I had planned when I first moved from Spokane to Denver, I realize now that the ministry I might have walked away with would have been my own ministry – a ministry forged according to my own wants and desires. Instead, the detour I experienced stripped away all of my ideas and forced me to open myself to the leading of the Spirit. Perhaps there are areas of your own life that have not unfolded according to your expectations. In the past, the frustrations that grew out of these areas might have driven you away from God. Today, I would invite you to sit with these detours and think of them differently – think of those detours as things that helped you “trust God totally”. Til next time…
Featured Passage: 2 Corinthians 1:8-11. One of the most memorable times of my life occurred during the spring of 2001. Let me set that time up for you. You see just two years earlier, I had finally quit fighting my call to ministry and decided to enroll in seminary. I had narrowed my choices down to seminaries in Berkeley, CA; Chicago, IL; and Denver, CO. Whichever seminary I picked meant that I would completely uproot my life at the age of 32 – move somewhere between 870 miles (Berkeley) and 1700 miles (Chicago) – and start my life all over. I figured it would be okay to take such a risk since I had everything mapped out. In the middle of my seminary experience, however, the bottom dropped out on my plans: I was rejected as a candidate for ordained ministry in the denomination in which I was raised due to my sexual orientation. While I initially saw that as a crushing blow, over time I began to see the developments differently. In other words, I learned to see the wisdom in Paul’s words when – in speaking of the unexpected detours he had experienced in his own faith journey - he wrote: “As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally!” (2 Corinthians 8:10 from The Message). Had everything gone exactly the way I had planned when I first moved from Spokane to Denver, I realize now that the ministry I might have walked away with would have been my own ministry – a ministry forged according to my own wants and desires. Instead, the detour I experienced stripped away all of my ideas and forced me to open myself to the leading of the Spirit. Perhaps there are areas of your own life that have not unfolded according to your expectations. In the past, the frustrations that grew out of these areas might have driven you away from God. Today, I would invite you to sit with these detours and think of them differently – think of those detours as things that helped you “trust God totally”. Til next time…
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