“God works through different people in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves His purpose through them all” 1 Corinthians 12:6 (PH)
It is not the job I expected, nor one that I suspect that I will particularly excel at, but it seems to be the job that God has made me wait for eleven months for before presenting it to me late one night as I perused Linked In, one of my network sites, and discovered a fact that I had missed in the ten months of really working the networking syndicates….they have a job section. I send in the ‘online’ application, honestly answering that I couldn’t pass a street test if required for employment (I have been in A2 since July and still am a newbie). They called the next day and we spend the rest of that day and the next chasing each other on the phone.
Thursday, phone interview….Tuesday, meeting with the Hiring Manager and a race to the Secretary of State for a Chauffeur license and driving record copy….then dropping the application off, with the quickly snapped ‘passport’ quality photos, at the “Taxi Officer” of Ann Arbor Police Department, Officer Clock….
Monday, a call from Officer Clock saying he needed my chauffeur license copy. When I brought it in, he asked me to wait and came back with my application approved. A paid cabby license later and I’m officially licensed to be a taxi driver in the city of Ann Arbor. Tomorrow I call Betty and let her know I can attend training starting on Monday coming.
This is not what I was expecting…..ministry job aside.
There is no grace period here, no cushion of mercy that should I fall upon this ‘face for radio’ mug that will not cause further damage. I spend all of my funds on the licensing, running around and such…..I’m literally 180 miles from empty and there are some mighty bills due by mid-month. I had to go out and get pick through some ministry’s clothing bank for some work pants….they didn’t have any shirts…..and I can only hope the car maintains for a few more months until I can get it fixed. If for some reason, any reason, I can’t make this job work…….it is going to be a pretty big crater when I crash.
Not the beginnings I expected either……..dreaming aside.
It is no surprise to me how my secular life has followed my spiritual one. As one continued to fail, so did the other. I have come a long way from where I was six and a half years ago, when on Valentine’s day, God truly opened my heart and all the nastiness that a dying heart can gush out. He started me on a journey that day, a journey that has not ever worked out the way I imagined it would from the moment I surrendered; one that still twists through the valleys and the swamps of this wilderness with amazing dexterity and suddenness. Some would say I appear to be no further along that I was on the blustery February day, but I know that’s not true. Some would say that I’m worse off now that I ever was way back then. Maybe, but then one could say that Christ felt the same way when He hung on the cross and cried out to a Father that turned away from Him. Maybe I am worse off, but then that simply makes me that much closer to the prize.
As I have learned to subsist on a meager shadow of what I once earned, I have mirrored a meager fare in the spiritual life as well….slowly wearing off the edge of desire to be in ministry service in God’s church. As I have let go of those things I wanted above all else when I was employed, I began to give up those things I wanted above all else in the spiritual as well.
I should not be here in this place…….in all honesty.
As my beliefs have strained to the breaking point, both in my professional and spiritual abilities, I have let them go…..snapping them against the cruel taskmaster of faith and reality…..and they haven’t come rebounding back. I stand here on sheer ice, in both worlds, waiting for the breaking tearing that will signify my doom where my faith dies and my professional ability prove inadequate to the task.
I am at a point where I cannot encourage, sustain or support myself anymore, both in the spiritual and the secular world.
I am at a point where God has the clear opportunity to use this ‘different’ job to show me a ‘different’ work to do for Him…..
The job has changed, the life has changed and even my faith has changed……
But He stayed the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment