Low

When I was a child one of the most depressing days of the calendar year was always December 26th. It was the morning after Christmas when you woke up in your room surrounded by your mountain of new toys that you inevitably received even though Mom and Dad gave you the "don't expect much this year because we're broke" speech and you have everything you had been pining for since that Sears Wish-book arrived on your doorstep(I'm contextualizing here - growing up in Ontario in the 80s it was the Consumer's Distributing Catalogue for us). It didn't matter at all what you had, or what you had gained or how wonderful your Christmas had been all you can think about that morning is the fact that Christmas is over - and the next Christmas Season is at best 10 perhaps 11 months away. I feel a little bit that way today.

When I was a young pastor (perhaps I still am) a mentor of mine explained to me that it's fairly common for Pastors to experience the Monday blues. After an intense week of prayer and preparation for the Sunday service and the adrenaline and excitement that comes from doing God's work and seeing people respond - the notion that it's all finished can be difficult to deal with. It's not that things necessarily went poorly - in fact some of the lowest days in my experience have come after the greatest services - just like the lowest boxing days came after the best Christmases, but it's a longing for something that has passed and is now gone.

In that sense ministry can be a little like a drug. Your hit from serving God and when you come down from that high you go through withdrawal. Today I'm in a bit of withdrawal, I just finished an intense weekend that saw four distinct services in three days including a very emotional church family funeral, and the culmination of a long journey of faith and submission that saw me named the Lead Pastor of Estevan Alliance Church on Sunday. By all accounts things went wonderfully this weekend but here it is on Monday and I'm left feeling low.

This is not how I want to live my life. The roller coaster of emotions that accompany a ministry addiction is neither healthy nor honouring to God and I need to find a way to get off. When I was in Guatemala I was amazed at a particular cultural practice that the Guatemalan people practiced surrounding gifts. When you give a gift to a Guatemalan who is versed in their own cultures social graces that person will politely accept the gift and set it aside without opening it or otherwise mentioning it. To us that seems ungrateful but in that culture it is a sign that they value the giver more than the gift and to ignore you - even for a moment - to focus on the gift you gave would be terribly rude. If ministry - and the invitation to work alongside a God who has no functional need for our help - is a gift, how rude are we to God when we routinely focus on, obsess over and jones for his gifts but seem unsatisfied with just being with him when we're not ministering?

In his book, "Crazy Love" Francis Chan asks this poignant question:

The best things in life are gifts from the One who steadfastly loves us. But an important question to ask ourselves is this: Are we in love with God or just His stuff?

Imagine how awful it would feel to have your child say to you, “I don’t really love you or want your love, but I would like my allowance, please.” Conversely, what a beautiful gift it is to have the one you love look you in the eye and say, “I love you. Not your beauty, your money, your family, or your car. Just you.”

Can you say that to God?

Our love for Him always come out of His love for us. Do you love this God who is everything, or do you just love everything He gives you? Do you really know and believe that God loves you, individually and personally and intimately? Do you see and know Him as Abba, Father?

You could easily add ministry to that list of things we love that God gives us and be just as wretched in our response to him, and if I'm honest with myself I think I have.

I'm not trying to be overly preachy here, I'm just making some observations from my own life about some things that I think God wants to change - and isn't that what the season of Lent is for? My desire is to want God even more than I want to do things for him; to want God more than I want to work alongside him and in getting that perspective right to practice a more Guatemalan type of gratitude to my Saviour and Lord.

...

Onto today's Transformer. I have no compelling story about today's figure. To be honest, getting rid of this one is no big sacrifice. The truth of the matter is that I tried to sell this one on over a year ago and got no bids on the auction so it's been sitting in a flat-rate Canada Post shipping box in my basement since then. It's not a huge sacrifice but doing the right thing doesn't always include a huge sacrifice - sometimes being obedient to the call of God involves doing the easy things too. So here is a fairly nice looking figure - a black, convertible Corvette from the Transformers Alternators line named Battle Ravage.

Harry however may be more
heartbroken over this sale.

This is not to be confused with the much rarer, much cooler Jaguar XKR named Ravage who turned not into a robot but into a Jaguar similar to his Generation One cassette namesake. I had him and sold him ages ago.

Until tomorrow,

Chris