Deer Park United Methodist Church Blog

We all get tired.

You’d think exhaustion should only be a physically-based problem, and that our thoughts, being made of who-knows-what invisible substance of existence, should be exempt from running out of energy. … But it certainly happens.  And it usually happens when we need them most, doesn’t it?  This loss of thought-strength comes just as our loss of physical strength occurs– at the point of being taxed by situations outside of ourselves which demand repeated, and consistent use.

Yesterday morning I woke up to my alarm at five o’clock (I know this sounds ridiculously early for someone who works from home, but strangely, when the only face you have to answer to in the morning is your own reflection, you for some reason no longer mind waking up in the dark). After situating my feet in my slippers, I performed my same routine of folding the blankets on my couch, feeding my fish, putting wet food in the bowl for my cat, Beans, and unloading the dishwasher from the night before.

Everything was mechanically following the usual process, until I sat down to prepare for my day’s work.

As a pastor, my “day’s work,” blessedly is doing work for God, and working to help people feel closer to God in their own hours; but when I flipped open my bible (and accompanying “scholarly” resources handed down from my over-priced seminary tuition), I found myself hesitant to look at the print. I found my eyes skimming the words of scripture like a text book of boring material I resented being forced to stare into.  At first, I didn’t even realize this was happening; but the moment the reality struck me, I burst up from my chair in the kitchen as if I’d just found a black widow spider by my foot.

At that moment, I wasn’t looking into The Book, but into the very heart of spiritual exhaustion. And I didn’t want to see it.  I couldn’t see it. I had too much work to do.

Feeling like a complete schmuck, I paced over to the kitchen sink, and stared into nothing for a moment; when all of the sudden, my mouth moved and words pushed persistently out from my mind like typed paper from a printer.  I was talking with God, with no barriers, and certainly no specific intention. I wasn’t trying to pray. This was not a moment of set-aside meditation. It was a moment of needful interaction—like one of those moments, when you’ve been holding something in for too long that you’ve needed to say to your spouse, and it suddenly just bursts out while you’re grabbing a box of cereal from the shelf at the grocery store.

As absurd as it might sound, I found myself talking to God for so long in fact, that I eventually wound up pouring myself a cup of coffee as I spoke, staring up and out the window.  This conversation over coffee lasted a while, and I call it a “conversation,” because the expression, and understanding, and communication, was not a one-way rant, but a two-way time of connection between myself and the Life around me. In this conversation I told God I couldn’t lose It (God/You/”Him”)—-that I couldn’t let the fact that I had responded to God’s call, cause me to fall away from God, or become detached from God. I told God that I understood “Him” (“Him” being used here and after only for the sake of structural ease) to be the very Life inside of me, and that I could not live without that Life for the sake of trying to help others find that Life for themselves. It simply wouldn’t and couldn’t work that way.

In saying these things, my words then fell to fear and skepticism. I asked God what the point of being in ministry was, anyway–and why He’d called me to such a strange and seemingly futile task. I asked God, how many people really felt Him in the world; and how many people even could feel Him in the world; and if most ever did at all, no matter how often you spoke about “Him” with each other in a sanctuary or on couches at each other’s homes.

Between all of these comments and questions, I sat still, and let myself connect with the loud silence of the presence of God.

As I stood there, staring out while absurdly sipping from my coffee mug like God was sitting across a table, God shared God’s Peace with me, and responded to the words which pushed out from my mind.

It was a long conversation, but there was one bold and blunt truth God’s Silence told me so loudly, that  the words were strangely and clearly defined in my mind, as if my ears had actually heard them through sound.

When I asked if people experienced God,  God told me this:

‘Some never do. Sometimes it’s only our own experience of God which allows them to even come close to feeling the presence of God while they’re alive.’ God said, ‘And that’s why you are a minister.

…So get back to work.’