2014 – A Year End Reflection
The best way I can describe 2014 is – I began with an intimacy with God I had not experienced in a very long time and is ending with the birthing of a new ministry – The Sojourner’s Garden. Did the first give rise to the second? I don’t know because much happened in the “…” (the space) between the beginning and the end. The “…” is a lot like the “-” on a grave stone. You have a birth year and a death year and the “-” represents the time one spent on earth. Most often there are a lot of years represented by the “-.”
So what happened in the “…’s” this year. How has my soul been? How have my relationships grown? How has ministry been? Have I loved God with all I have? Have I loved my neighbor the same way? Maybe I need to do a beliefs & values check…
Trusted God with all my heart –
Being strong and courageous –
Guarding my heart –
Loving God and loving others –
Serving Him by serving you –
Giving voice to those who have no voice –
Developing relationships –
Choosing my words wisely –
Being transformed, shape, molded by God –
What are the grades I would give myself for these traits this last year? Without measurable outcomes I really don’t have a way of grading myself. I believe I would make the B honor roll. I would come up with a couple of A’s, a couple of C’s, and the rest B’s – some +’s, some -‘s. I need to work better at guarding my heart and choosing my words. I am pretty good at serving others and giving voice to the voiceless (at least ministering to them/with them).
What I need to do now is look again at my personal life mandate and put into place how I am going to live out each of my belief/values in the coming year. Are all my operational beliefs still valid? Do I need to incorporate something new? This is a task for another day for now I want to reflect back over the last year and see what I have learned.
The year began on what I have had a very hard time describing. Coming back from the CQ COC retreat in Dec 2013 I was in a spiritual state of nirvana, a sense of a deep, personal, intimate relationship with God. My time alone with God was a time of true contentment but with a sense of change coming. Yes, I know that those two statements seem to oppose each other – how can one be content, yet be sensing a change? Maybe this is why it is a time that is so hard to explain.
As winter rolled into spring and then burst forth into summer the changes I was anticipating did not happen and I had to re-evaluate the signs I had been reading. As things unfolded differently than I had plan my relationship with God had also returned to a more “normal” state. My time with God no longer had the same intimate feeling it did a few months earlier. The question I ask now is who was it that changed, me or God? It’s wasn’t that I was now discontent or didn’t sense change, but it was in some way different.
As summer moved into fall I once again turned to what I was seeking and instead started asking “God, what do you have in store for me?” This simple act of turning from what I thought God should do to asking what it is I should do seemed to draw me back into that closer, more intimate relationship – it is different than what I experienced at the beginning of the year. Not better or worse, just different. At work, my job description changed again as did my office for a couple of days a week – can you say window. My time with God began to change as well. Consistent time with God, centering myself on Him who created me, prayer (which has always been my weakest spiritual discipline) came alive, and my dream reemerged – a dream reflecting back through the years actually has its genesis in the the mid-1990’s as Shoal Lake Ministry.
I have come to realize that I was alive after the retreat a year ago because God had stirred in me this new adventure – spiritual director, mentor, teacher, dreamer, writer – and I had embraced it. As different opportunities arose I assumed this is where I was suppose to move – not bothering to really seek God’s will in it. You see we were so close that I didn’t need to ask, I just knew this was it. The thing is these different opportunities would have put me into a “box” where I might not be able to do all that God has planned. But, you see, these “boxes” would have been the safe way to move forward. God isn’t about this kind of safety, rather I need to push forward just like the barbarian sheep I wrote about 5-6 years ago. I need to push my head through the fence and get some people together not to push my head back but rather to push my butt forward to the other side. Will this happen tomorrow, no I don’t think so. But I am putting together a five year (give or take a couple of years) plan to set me up, for what is now being called, my encore career. That ministry that I can do as my life begins to wind down and I settle into the last few decades of my life.
2014 you have been a good year. I don’t have a lot written about you through the year but God has been good. I have entered into new ministry opportunities at church, while scaling back others. I have drawn closer to God and what He has in store for me in the future. I have seen my kids grow and mature and I have realized they did listen to a lot of the things I told them. They don’t always do things the way I would but then again they aren’t me (thank goodness). I have had a lot of wonderful adventures this past year with my wife of 32+ years and look forward to loving her and getting to know her even a little better in this coming year. Ok, I admit it, this empty nest thing is really kinda fun.
I close this reflection with a prayer of gratitude to the creator of all thing, the transformer of my life, the source of who I am and who I am still becoming. Father God, thanks for using me to be your ambassador, your hands and feet, your minister while I go about doing this thing called life. Amen.