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Yesterday was another milestone event for me -- I turned sixty-five. I found myself thinking back over my almost 40 years preparing for and serving in ministry. While a student at Columbia Theological Seminary, I began as a part-time Youth Director at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Smyrna. After seminary, I served churches with names like Westminster, Covenant, Shallowford, Big Canoe, and now Johns Creek. There are a number of stories in the Bible that make reference to 40 years, which one pastor has said is Bible code for “a very long time.” Beginning in 1982 and finishing up in 2022 sometimes seems like a very long time, while other times it seems to have flown by. So, I have found myself reflecting on the places God has called me to serve and I am honored to have been used by God in that way.
I have also tried to be in the present and pay attention to what this transition is like as I am going through it, and not try to hurry past it. Roy Oswald said the ministers sometimes try to hurry through their last days, probably as a way to avoid the pain and the discomfort. He compares it to his childhood experience of having to run through thistles barefoot with his younger brother at the beach and their plan to simply go as fast as they could. So, I have intentionally tried to reflect on what I'm going through so that I can learn from it. Oswald even suggests that when we go through these kinds of transitions and endings, it is practice for how we will one day face death and dying. Maybe.
But I find myself also looking forward to the next season in my life. In one of her books, Barbara Brown Taylor says that when people are concerned about how they will be used by God, trying to discern what God may want them to do next in life, she says that we shouldn't worry about it because God will know what to do with us next. I am trusting that the same God who has walked beside me for 40 years will know what to do with me next. Psalm 121:8 reminds us that the Lord will guard our coming and our going now and forevermore. May God guard your comings and goings -- whatever they may be.
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