I love my job.
Sept 7, 2023
I love my job.
I was asked if it is true that if you loved your job you would never work a day in your life. My answer—not true. You will work twice as hard because you do love it. When the job gets awful but you love it anyway, the saying means you rarely wake up and wish you never had to work there again. I love my job.
A pastor recently shared his despair and declared he is leaving ministry because it is awful. I have experienced some of the same difficulties. You have likely left or felt trapped in a job as well. I have bad days. Sometimes I’ve had bad months (years). I’ve had ministry jobs that were way more work than joy, and which I did in fact actively seek to leave. Nevertheless,
What else would I do?
I can imagine all kinds of things it would be fun to try. There is nothing else I can imagine sticking with when things got hard. I love the challenge of thinking about and being the idealist. I am the sky is falling realist who proclaims, “But thus sayeth the Lord—I’m about to do a new thing! Wait for it!”
Then, I get to share the invitation to be part of the transformation. I hope you discover the joy in the journey toward wholeness in spite of the frailties of human life, the joyless drudgery of work you are not interested in, the pains of loss, the agony of slow-motion success.
There’s More to Love
My joy is being a witness to what others do without me which make this world a better place because they are in it. Often, they don’t even realize the difference that one conversation, or sacrifice, makes. I love my job because I am called to witness who you are, what you do, what and who you love. Sometimes I see it because you are kind, loving, serving, offering. Sometimes I see it because you are angry or hurt or failing or even mean. I am called to see, not judge, called to love not fix, called to hope.
You Can, Too
You can have this joy, too. And that’s where my work begins. Can I model the witness and testimony side without judgement in a way that invites you to be free of that burden? The new thing God is doing, has done, and will always do is to free us of that original divisiveness (sin) that is the burden of what we Christians call our fallen humanity—judging between good and evil.
When we follow the way of Christ, what we are learning to do is see people with love. Including ourselves. I’m still learning. I fail and I succeed.
I hope you’ll find a small group, a Bible study, and a community of friends with whom you can be authentically yourself and know that you are loved. In that embrace, may you know the love of God and discover your true vocation.
You, too, are called to the ministry that I love. My paid work comes forth from the church. Yours will be wherever you work–and play. May your life’s work be love.
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Come and See
Turn Around
This mentality fades over into the invitation we offer to others when we do evangelism. “Come and see,” what Jesus is all about too often becomes the Church trying to scare people into heaven. “Repent! Save yourselves—confess and God will forgive!” I think that’s why Presbyterians have so much trouble inviting friends to participate in church activities—we aren’t fearful. We are full of grace. And that is not easy to “sell.”
Come and See
This month we begin a new series of Christian Formation, of discipleship study, called, “Follow Me.” There is one unit that reflects on confession as a spiritual practice (coming in November). All the other units are about the breadth of practices in church life and life beyond our worship gatherings that help us see Jesus everywhere.
The word repent means, “turn around.” If our lives too often take us in directions that are unfulfilling, or leave us wanting something more meaningful, perhaps we can turn around, and learn together more about what Jesus invites us to “come and see.”
I’m pretty sure it will include friendship rather than fear, food rather than faultfinding, and a fresh wind of the holy. I wonder, how did you complete that thought? What do you need the Spirit to refresh in you, around you, with a breath of life?
Maybe you will come and see what Jesus has in mind. See you Sunday?
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Compassion
Tired of rudeness, crudeness, hateful monologues? Tired of hearing of threats, fights, gunfights? At a loss as to how to respond or make a difference? I hear the question from people across the spectrum of political perspectives: why are people so mean?
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.
For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get,
and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” Mt 7: 2
We struggle to challenge the ugliness in society, much less among friends or colleagues. We think it is not our place to judge. Worse, we have been bullied and are afraid we will get hurt, truly hurt, or even killed.
First, it is not wrong to reflect back to a person your experience of their statements. You are sharing about yourself. As hard as it may be to “see something, hear something, say something,” responding in the moment is an act of kindness. By expressing your own perception of something as hurtful, and as a way of speaking that you will not engage with, you are engaging with a person in a new way. This kind of dialogue infers that you care more about how the two of you relate to one another than whether one of you is right.
Examples: “That comment was hurtful, mean, because I believe/I felt/I heard..,” “I respond better to kindness than to tone of voice/these words/doing this violence,” “I will not participate in this kind of talk or action because it is cruel and dangerous.”
Also, if you lower your vocal register toward a tenor/bass sound, and speak very quietly, it shifts the listener’s posture toward you.
All these options are simply tools for decreasing aggressive conversation, and de-escalating stress, which I have used with people angry about their own illnesses, or caregiving responsibilities, or dying, at moments when anger overflowed and threats were being tossed around like candy.
The “Problem” with Us
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’
while the log is in your own eye? Mt 7: 3-4
If we think we are not part of the problem, we are too isolated from those we look down upon and too self-absorbed to notice the pain we ourselves inflict- sometimes by what we do not say and do not do.
Silence and ignorance are complicit in creating a world where some say, “what’s wrong with those people?”
Yet, when we are self-reflective, instead of asking about “those,” we ask about ourselves with love and become better behaved advocates, we have a greater capacity for compassion. Thus, we can love our neighbors. As others have said, everyone has their own demons and is fighting battles largely by themselves. Compassion invites us to regard mean behavior as the outcome of sin’s power over us, the very thing Jesu has come to defeat. Healing was his “weapon” of choice. He regarded everyone from the point of view that Sin, with a capital S, had worked evil upon them and they needed to be freed from captivity, released from prison. The key to those cell doors was unconditional love.
Cruelty can’t beat Compassion
The practice of compassion which allows us to, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Mt 7: 2-5), is the path of courageous healing and reconciliation which transforms us as followers of Jesus Christ.
Go in peace, and let your light shine! RevBev
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Also…faith-parenting
Also Called
It was a bit unnerving to be called to ministry by that midnight spiritual revelation that caught me on my knees and very much by surprise. More surprising was to find my seminary classmates included many second-career people and mothers like me. In one class we read a book titled, “Also a Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma.”1 I hated her title. I felt so guilty all the time about being in school, working toward a new career, putting my children in daycare, that I could not make sense of the, “also.” For me it was, “First, last, always.” After my ordination I finally understood the dilemma the author was wrestling with.
I stood before the Senior Adults lunch group to introduce myself for the first time in my new call. I told them about my faith, my education, my first career, my hopes for this new service with them. We then “opened the floor” to conversation and someone said, “Do you have any family you want to tell us about?”
For days, I felt the shockwave of having spent 5 minutes, at least, describing who I was and failing to mention my family, my kids! I had become in the career world, “also a mother.” Miller-McLemore’s challenge to us is an invitation to reshape the way we think of the gendered worth of work versus motherhood, but not both, and the absence of an option for men to embrace as fathers. This book nearly 30 years old; yet, the attacks today on women’s rights and the rights of transgender people and drag queens is rooted in the same ages old controversies of what makes a man and what defines a woman.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the First and the Last,
the Beginning and the End. Rev 22: 13
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Myth or Fact
Myth or Fact
Imagine finding out that Scripture had a lot in common with all these other cultures and their sacred literature. The names were different. The dates rarely matched. Place names were not the same. Their gods were not, ever, our God. Yet, there was no denying the relationship between the tales. How could I possibly have been so deceived?!
Living Word
Come and See
Please begin to plan for your Sunday morning small group. There will be classes for all children and youth, and two classes for adults. Some will be straight up bible study, others will be topical. We need each other. Let us learn together about our God-given faith and purpose.
Sundays – 9:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. beginning September 10.
“Bible Study” by FotoGuy 49057 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Back to School
New again
Starting September 10-Church School for All Ages!
The Session is excited to announce the beginning of a new season of Discipleship.
On Sundays, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m., you are invited to come to church school. There will be two adult classes; a youth class; and classes for nursery; 3yo-Pre-K; K-2nd; and 3rd-5th graders.
Your Discipleship Committee consists of Adults: Ally Fetch, Youth: Clark Seipt, Kirsten Shields, Children: Sarah Sassak
For the children’s ministry
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me! Isaiah 6: 8
Backpack blessings for Back-to-School will be August 20. Watch for more to come from the youth and adult ministries as we move into the Fall Kickoff, September 10.
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