Thirty Years of Ministry

April 20th is the 30th anniversary of my ordination. Thirty years! It has taken me around the block a few times. I have made countless visits, dedicated parishioners' children and buried their parents. I have knocked on doors at 2:00 A.M. to inform people a loved one has been killed in an accident, or committed suicide; and I have crawled into car wrecks to pray with people as their life drained away with the gasoline, motor oil and antifreeze. I have preached hundreds of sermons, sat through more committee meetings than I ever want to count, and listened to the most intimate confessions of people who cannot live one moment longer with their burden. I have received numerous notes of thanks from parishioners that made me feel like a million bucks, and I have received a letter so vicious that I felt as though I had been physically kicked. I have cried, and I have laughed a lot because of the joy of it all.

Most of that time I did not pray every day. I was too busy.

Mistake.

The impetus to pray for an hour a day came when I realized that preaching was no longer the piece-of-cake task it once had been for me. Preaching used to be so easy: I was so very confident of my answers-–as confident as my parishioners often were of their questions. I was sure of life, sure of my place in it, sure of my unshakable faith. Then came the news that a sister had been killed in a hiking accident. Then the rape and murder of a friend. Then discovering a lump in my body where there should have been no lump. Then a truck and I (on my bike) tried to share the same piece of pavement (I lost). Oh sure, the searing pain of the losses subsided with time, and the cancer is long gone, but the foundations upon which my world view rested were badly shaken. Preaching became far more difficult, for the simple reason that living became far more difficult. And I won't preach what I don't have the guts or maturity to practice. As I said to my parishioners one Sunday morning, "Preaching is easy. It's practicing that's hard." But then, many of them knew that already.
Thirty years. Both preaching and practicing are getting harder; so I pray all the more. Thirty years, and God keeps whomping me on the head and telling me to keep at it and to love more . . . and to pray more. Thirty years, and I am blessed beyond measure. And prayer is what binds it all together.
Pray for me. I shall for you.