briefermadness

For the first time in 30 years, I am questioning what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I have always loved being a lawyer, and have felt that it was God's calling on my life. I enjoyed getting up every morning and going to work. But I am hitting that point in life (50 was a magical number) where I am supposed to question my goals and significance. So that's what I'm doing. I don't know why; I just am. I still enjoy aspects of what I do; but the last couple years have taken some of the life out of it. I am rediscovering parts of my old love for the law, but it is slow and painful.

Strange, the place I feel the most comfortable is in youth ministry. But that's really improbable, on many levels. I'm 53 for goodness sake. I'm well aware that I look stupid playing with the kids in children's ministry; I look just as stupid trying to be a hip youth pastor. But I really do feel like the kids and the youth, for the most part, listen to me. Don't know why, but it seems like they do. Adults just see me as silly sometimes and wonder why I don't act "mature." But the kids listen. Go figure.

I also feel like the youth still have that capability to capture the "radicalness" of Christianity. When I became a Christian during the Jesus Movement in the '60s, we weren't about "church" and acting nice and being respectable. We certainly weren't about all becoming good conservative republicans for Jesus. We were about relationships and mission and outreach and abandoning your life to God. I see the youth as still willing to embrace that dangerous true Christianity. Some of it is silly and "youthful enthusiasm." But give me that any day over "appropriate behavior." Jesus did not die to make us "appropriate." So the kids listen. And when I challenge them with something, they really seem challenged, at least for a moment. Adults mostly just smile and wonder when I'm going to leave them alone.

But, I'm at the time of life where I'm supposed to be "producing for retirement." I've got a wife and three kids that still need me to make a substantial living. The kids are each in times of life where expenses can be high and they have little or no money to work with. If it was just up to me, and what I require, I could live in mom's old house, with my books and an internet connection (and a decent ham radio antenna). But it isn't just up to me. I've got 'sponsabilitees. Not just responsabilities...I've got people I love who depend on me and who I want to care for.

So I come into work this morning and Elizabeth has left a book on my chair (I guess her going away present to me...why is she giving me a going away present?) The book is "Traveling Light" by Max Lucado. She writes me a note that tells me I've got ministry to do. Whhhaaaattt? Where? How? Work with the kids at the church? Is that all? Isn't that plenty? If not, then...

So I guess this is just a roundabout semi-public (is anyone out there?) prayer. Show me; lead me. Yuch... that brings up my life verse: "Search me O God and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." Ps. 139.