Coming Home?

• Mike’s Musings (01/23/2006) •

Dear family & friends,

Coming Home?

A few of you know this, most do not, this past Friday my church and I received a letter of resignation from our pastor. He had received a job offer from a larger church and he has decided to take it. The rest of the church that could make it met yesterday evening to decide what to do next. Many ideas were put forth and discussed. We knew we still wanted to meet together but were unsure of the format or time.

As for me, things were a bit different. In many ways, 2:42 Community Church had been the main reason I stayed in Saint Cloud after my time at the V.A. ended. I was planning on being ordained with them and had made plans to get my license to study at SCSU to be a Drug and Alcohol Counselor as a tag along, so I could become a Recovery Chaplain. Now I’m not so sure. Counseling still interests me, yet I’m more and more interested in the spiritual side of it, something none of my courses at SCSU would get close to. In fact, as I have looked around via the Internet, there are few schools that do. Many seminaries and Christian colleges, including Bethel, offer counseling degrees, yet they do not, at least explicitly integrate the spiritual element in the way I’m looking for. The closest one to what I’m looking for is at the Psychological Studies Institute, but that’s all the way in Georgia. Talbot also has an attractive program as part of their Institute for Spiritual Formation, but that’s in California.

So, what am I looking for? Maybe it’s just the books I’ve been reading or the people I’ve been hanging around with, but over the years as I have prayed, I have felt drawn to know how God shapes us into the people He desires us to be. From my biblical studies, I know that God has put His image in each of us (Gen 1), that He longs for us to come to know Him that we might receive His Holy Spirit inside to form us into the image of His Son Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1-2). To do this, we need to crucify our perceptions of ourselves along with Christ (Gal. 2:20) and become resurrected with Him (Col. 3:1) to new life as we are shaped and molded into His Image. In my mind, this happens as we put away our ways and desires of the past and take on the disciplines and virtues of Christ. As we do this more and more, we will exhibit more and more, the fruits of the Spirit (Gal, 5:22-23). This is how we become like Christ. This is what I want to come to an understanding of myself and help others to as well. I want to learn to see how God is shaping me into the man He longs for me to be, not so I can take over, though that may be the desire of some, but so I can cooperate and play along and help others to do the same. This has been the desire of my heart for some time now and I am still struggling to know how to live it out. When I pray, I daily turn this over to God and desire that He be the One to live it out through me, yet I still struggle to know what that would even look like.

In the midst of all of this, is the desire to just throw in the hat of ordained ministry and go home. But go home to what? My folks are more than willing to have me live down in Florida. Not with them, for they know that might be a bit much for me, but down there close by to them and my family that lives there. Yet I have never lived in Florida for the long term before. It would be a totally new environment with new people and everything. Yes, my family would be there, but friends would need to be made anew. Maybe if my folks were still living back in Massachusetts, things would be different. At least there I could return to my old church with my friends there. Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve been back there. Yet I’m not sure I’m ready to leave Minnesota either. My friends from all my years at seminary and since are here and I have really come to value those relationships. Sigh . . .

I’m so tired of being unsure and uncertain. Just as things were beginning to feel more and more certain, they seem to fall apart all over again. It’s times like this I find myself turning to the Psalms, both in the Bible and my poems. The Book of Psalms is often seen as the Judeo-Christian book of prayers. So are my poems, at least for me. So this month I share with you one of both.

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
He utters His voice, the earth melts.

The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Come, behold the works of the LORD;
see what desolations He has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
He burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.”

The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Born Cracked
Born into the world a cracked vessel needing to be filled
The world she offers many things to fill it
Yet I always come back wanting more
Each thing feels right at first
But in time they all turn up lacking

Back in the garden we knew what it was to be filled
Back in the garden we knew what it was to be loved
Back in the garden we knew what it was to be accepted
Dear God why did we ever turn away from You the True Source

Cursed to walk this world abandoned, though we are never alone
You pursue us day and night yet still we run
Unable to turn, unable to be filled
Until by grace You extend the hand
And turn us around in Your Embrace

The cross makes this possible
The blood of Jesus fills our cracked vessel
His Blood seals the crack
In Him we are filled
In Him we are loved
In Him we are accepted

Though I know of His Love for me
Though I have soaked in the blood
Still my vessel leaks
Many are the times I know not filling
Many are the times I know not love
Many are the times I know not acceptance

Why is this the case?
Dear God, extend Your Hand
Dear God, send down Your Grace
Turn me around full in Your Embrace.

Thanks again to each of you for joining me as I share my life with you in this fashion. I hope you were encouraged in your own journeys toward God. He is drawing each of us ever closer to Him and molding us all more and more each day. Sometimes we are conscious of that shaping, other times we are not. May God’s peace dwell richly with you, no matter where of the journey He finds you.

In His Grip,

Michel Jon Willard