I would like some on-the-job training. This, of course, requires a job, which I don't currently have. It wouldn't even have to be that difficult. Hire me as your youth pastor. Show me the youth room. Introduce me to a few teens. I'll take it from there.
And if God has some more lessons to teach me, He could certainly feel free to do so. Train me up while I am on the job. This makes sense to me, because then I would be providing for my family once again, our future would be more certain (certainly more than it is right now) and I could be passing along those lessons to any who would listen (or read, like you fine people!).
Why couldn't God do that? Maybe because He isn't as concerned with how my family will be taken care of as I am. Sounds scandalous, right? Did this guy just try to say he cares more than God? Actually....no, that's not what I am saying.
What I am saying is that I am more concerned. To be concerned means to worry. It means to have anxiety. So when I say I have more concern, it's not actually bragging. It's admitting weakness.
God has no need for concern because He knows He loves us and will certainly take care of us, as He has for all our days. It's not a concern for God because He doesn't rely on silly things like money to make things happen. I, however, have a limited scope of things and believe jobs must be had in order to have needs taken care of. How silly of me.
Jen and I have considered that we are learning some lessons while we wait out this transition. But I have often wondered if God knows about on the job training. Lots of companies do that, you know.
Then I remember that God does not see me as I see me. I see me as a youth pastor. He sees me as a child. It would be very easy for me to allow my age to cause me to think I am having some sort of midlife crisis. Obviously, I am too young to be mid-life. (I don't even believe that anymore, so I don't expect you to either.)
But it's not a crisis. Certainly not of the mid-life variety. I know what I would like to do. I know who I am, and to Whom I belong.
I'm not the first to go through this kind of transition. I've been reading through Exodus most recently, because Moses is another example of a guy who seemed to know what he was doing, until, of course, he didn't.
As you may know, Moses goes from Prince of Egypt to Top-10 Most Wanted. He finds himself living in another land, perhaps the best educated shepherd in all of history. Here's what we read in Exodus 3:1;
One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God.
It struck me that Moses had to go 'far into the wilderness' in order to come to the mountain of God. God didn't meet Moses in Egypt, where life was comfortable. God didn't meet Moses at his new place in Midian, where Moses had at least gotten comfortable. God met Moses 'far into the wilderness.'
I would like for this time of transition to be over. I would like to know where God is leading my family. But perhaps I have not gone far enough into the wilderness. And if God isn't concerned, then I don't have cause for concern either.
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