catching his breath

I freeze. Stop. Pause.

The words don’t come.

Here for a cause.

To tell him just some

Of the things he’s made

Possible in my life.

But thoughts on parade

Create great strife

Inside my heart.

Confusion and hesitation;

Where to start?

Oh, the frustration…

But then I stop in confidence

With reason for ponder.

Thanks to the Spirit he sent—

My God doesn’t have to wonder.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts know the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. –Paul.

Finish the sentence. Ministering means…

Ministering means helping others find thin places. I first read about thin places in a book by Marcus Borg. It stuck and I haven’t let go of the concept. Thin places exist when heaven and earth come wonderfully close to slamming together, where only a trace of humanity’s fall remains. They are moments when a person can sense the divine within the mundane. They are experiences where things of earth seem flooded by the energy of heaven. In the moment of a thin place, a person can feel the tug of God’s presence.

Imagine you were injected with liquid metal and studded with magnetic particles. Now envision that throughout the day you were required to pass between a sheet of metal and a life-sized magnet. Both warp and lunge your direction as you walk through. You feel the impending collision ahead of time as each piece forces millions of invisible, molecular particles into your path. That’s the force of thin place.

Prayer. A certain song. A smile. Birth. That old recliner. A lover’s embrace. A glass of wine shared among friends. Psalm 23. Worn spots in the shroud of humanity’s fall.

Ministry, then, ought to encompass an intentional effort to lead others into thin places. It is God alone that can heal and mend broken hearts, and in a fallen world that bars his full disclosure we must encounter him at the thin spots, at least for now. So I understand ministers as once-broken veterans of thin place exploration, discoverers of the renewing force of God’s presence, who go back and share their discoveries with those now-broken.

Some of the deepest, most fruitful people emerged into a life of powerful influence from a life of prayer, solitude, disconnection and powerlessness. Consider Mother Teresa. Moved by aching empathy for the poor in Calcutta she began serving them with limited resources, impotent political and networking power and nothing much to offer except her love and life. Yet her story of immeasurable and radical love penetrates the coldest hearts.

I don’t get it. How does someone with such limited resources offer such unlimited benevolence?

When I come across a person whose had an impact on society of this magnitude I find myself asking misguided questions (questions conditioned by the overtones of American progress). I ask “What does this person say or believe or do to get the job done?” or “What resources and connections does this person use?” and “What type of system or program does this person use?” But these questions breakdown when you use them to investigate the work of someone like Mother Teresa.

Well, let me back up. They break down as long as they stay focused on the surface of the activity. Let me explain.

She does have resources, connections and power. She taps into a reality that avails itself to all of us. She says and believes and does certain things which cultivate and promote her work. She says she’s not alone. She believes in the One who creates life out of nothing. She labors in faith that he will do that very thing. She feeds knowing food will be there again tomorrow. She touches the unclean knowing God has called all clean. She dies daily in pain and weariness knowing that he brings strength and vitality to those who faint.

She does have a system. It’s love. It unconditional love that moves to relieve the results of fallen humanity. It’s trust. She trusts that as she acts God will work through her and make miracles of her mistakes. He will turn her hiccups into healing. She acts and he appears.

I cannot lay blame for my floundering influence on a lack of resources, a dysfunctional network or a dwindling budget. Any kingdom grace that may result from my actions must exhaust the resource of power available beside my bed in the morning, hands folded, head bowed. An invitation needs to leave my lips and ask God to get to work animating me into a fruitful kingdom activity.

If this never happens, nothing will, no matter how hard I try.

I know. I keep trying.

Few biblical ideas nag at us more than the one contained in passages that hint at our potential perfection. Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” For real? Is he kidding? It’s easy to struggle under the weight of this statement, knowing who we really are. We know, through simple observation, that many who profess Jesus as Lord don’t necessarily live up to what that means. Us included.

Yet, we must wrestle with this tension. Perhaps many have given up any pursuit of reflecting the divine image that Jesus anticipated in his followers. Some abandon the goals of transformation and settle for a grace that happens later, after we die, maybe. But biblical writers clearly state the intention of discipleship. “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Biblical salvation, then, takes on a broader scope and speaks to a deeper reality of change in our lives than does the reduction of salvation to the initial moment of forgiveness. Pondering the idea of living as a new creation can leave us skeptical. Does Jesus really seek to remake us, radically and completely changing us into fully reflecting God’s image? Yes.

And to not lose hope, we must accept that this transformation emerges in a convergence of God’s empowering grace and our focused effort (2 Peter 1:3, 10). To invite this convergence we intentionally engage spiritual exercises that put us in position to receive his power and life, participating “in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in this world” as we compile the quality of life discussed by Peter to the point we “never stumble” (see 2 Peter 1:10).

A caterpillar isn’t really a caterpillar but a butterfly. But it will never become its actual self by jumping off of tree limbs attempting to fly, trying hard enough to change color and shape or reading a becoming your inner butterfly self-help book. The transformation requires a power outside of the caterpillar’s own resources. This doesn’t mean the caterpillar sits back and waits. It crawls to the right places. It builds. It prepares. It works into shape a cocoon. And in the convergence of effort and natural forces a butterfly emerges.