I know that God has taken me, that He loves me, that He calls me his Beloved, and yet it is hard for this knowledge to overtake the pain in my heart. Being and becoming the Beloved, claiming yourself as taken by God, also takes a lot of deep and intimate healing. We all have scars from our lives. There are parts of us that we reject, there are lies we have been told and believed, there is the belief that love has to be earned. All of these scars are chains, keeping us from fully grasping and living into life as God’s Beloved. So I encourage you first today that you ARE God’s Beloved.
It feels therapeutic and exhilarating, to work on something that I’m both good at and enthusiastic about. As cliche as it sounds, when I get into lesson planning like that, it feels like I’m doing the thing that I was put on the earth to do.
As I sit back and reflect on my time taking pottery classes, it sounds like I discovered exactly who I am. Make no mistake, this journey isn’t over. As a potter and person, God is constantly exposing more of who I am- more of what my calling is.
I find it difficult to get away from screens right now. I feel very literally out of touch with reality and what is right here with me. Out of touch with God who is right here with me.
Sometimes we make the conversation around calling too difficult.
We get swept up into thinking that we need to hear a booming voice or see mystical vision. Or we get stuck thinking about what we’re supposed to be when we grow up or what job or profession we’re supposed to commit ourselves to.
Here’s the more difficult question: how do we let go of our control?
We have to first let go of what’s not working. Sometimes, words can be so necessary and healing and life-giving in prayer to God. But there are also times when words, or a lack of words, hinder us from reaching that place of vulnerability with our Creator.
In a time where immediate gratification has, in my view, made its way into church culture in an increasingly worrisome manner, it’s time for us to revisit the lesson of Epiphany by recapturing the sacred art of attention.
In our families, our communities, our church, our nation and our world, this is the time of both reflection and looking forward. This is one of our last opportunities to be really honest with ourselves before God before the end of 2020. We are waiting in eager anticipation for this upcoming year with great expectation and hope.
Many of you have started a LONG Christmas break. My question is: how are you going to be intentional with this extended time to continue discovering God’s call on your life?
As I jumped in head-first into this new role as a church-wide intern, already busy and concerned with the other things I already had going on in my life, I began to see it. I began to see the importance of the backstage. And not just any backstage, but rather, the one in which the Kingdom is called to play a role in.
We have all tackled different seasons in our lives. Whether we are on the highest mountain or in the deepest of valleys, we have been through it all. Especially in our current world, most people are experiencing seasons of uncertainty and waiting.
“More than simply including the outcast should they wish to be involved, the church is called to move toward them and invite them into the truth and community of the gospel.
Friedrich Schleiermacher once wrote that religion was “a sense and taste for the Infinite.” If the great Schleiermacher’s words are true, then since the very first moment I started The Co-op, I have not only sensed and tasted the Infinite, but have been wholly grasped by it and submerged deeper into the depths of God’s grace and holiness.
I’m sitting in an empty room. The walls are blank and just beginning to give that slight echo of a house without residents. Some folks would find times filled with blank walls and packed boxes to be bittersweet or perhaps even sad- but few people probably find comfort in the reset of moving quicker than the child of a United Methodist Pastor.
