A Deep Hole...

In my life, during the season of lent (the 45 days leading up to Easter), I try to install a practice that will intensify my experience and help me identify more fully with the sacrifice Jesus made for all humanity.  In hindsight God almost always honors my intent...which in the darkest moments can feel like sheer lunacy that I would intentionally choose to walk this path.

A colleague of mine recently commented that the life of ministry and the life of a pastor is not one of glamor and excitement, but rather it is marked by a broken heart and a wounded spirit.  It is not that pastors have the market on faithfulness cornered or that they are impervious to failure, as we have all seen plenty of examples to the contrary.  But after having done this job for decades it can feel like the primary function is to be a rare example of fidelity in a sea of apathy and faithlessness.

Then life crashes in.  Sickness and death come close for all of us at times, but when it is everywhere, and on all sides - that is too much!  Inside my mind these are not isolated thoughts.  In a moment like this one, as I sit here typing this post, they are things that stack and build until they threaten to crush your soul.  The weight of these moments bring insight to how a straw could literally break a camel's back.

For this moment in time it feels like I am in a deep, dark, inescapable hole.  Strangely I have put myself here.  In many ways I have chosen this exact path.  Sure circumstance can make it worse or better.  In some ways it is a mindset but mostly it is grounded in the broken reality that surrounds us all.

Thankfully I am not overcome by the darkness that is around me, and in fact expect to encounter Jesus here.  I believe it will accomplish some good, shaping, purpose in my life.  But it is hard for me to have that long view in the day to day.  Mostly I am just grateful that I do not anticipate remaining here for long!