After the INCREDIBLE irregularity of summer working in full time ministry with two preschool kids that had no consistent childcare, I finally experienced the bliss of the start of the school year. Finally, it felt like I was working full days again without constantly calling around to see who could watch my kids a few hours here and a few hours there. My daughter began Kindergarten, and my three-year-old son entered his first ever daycare. What a relief!
And then the bus came twenty minutes earlier the second day of school. Of course we missed it, had no way of knowing, and so after waiting forever, I had to drive my daughter to school anyway (the opposite direction from work, of course). Not everything in today’s comic is exactly what has happened to us, but the truth is, we went from feeling like responsible, confident parents to quickly feeling like social services was going to remove our kids for neglect!
When you’re in a job (ministry or otherwise) where almost everything you do is under the scrutiny of loads of other people, you don’t want your private life to start feeling that way, too. I can do work that I’m incredibly proud of, certain that it was pleasing to God and fitting for my calling, only to find out that I somehow accidentally left someone out, or overrepresented one area to the neglect of another. I can preach a sermon with complete confidence that God was working powerfully in the hearts of the people. But all it takes is the one person with the corrective, the one person who was wounded instead of built up by my leadership, the one person who was disappointed instead of delivered…and I can feel crushed for days. Those are not the times you want to come home to get a note from your child’s teacher that you sent the wrong folder to school so your kid didn’t get to participate in something.
So for anyone weary in life or ministry, I’d like to think Charles Wesley is plucking this obscure tune on his banjo for you:
- Come, O thou greater than our heart / And make thy faithful mercies known;
The mind which was in thee impart; / Thy constant mind in us be shown.
2. O let us by thy cross abide / Thee, only thee, resolved to know,
The lamb for sinners crucified / A world to save from endless woe.
3. Take us into thy people’s rest / And we from our own works shall cease;
With thy meek Spirit arm our breast / And keep our minds in perfect peace.
4. Jesus, for this we calmly wait: / O let our eyes behold thee near!
Hasten to make our heaven complete: / Appear, our glorious God, appear!