Sitting in the lounge of Strasbourg train station, I wait for my train and reflect. This week I've encountered several faces from the past, and almost every time we've had a little catch-up session. Among them, one person was quite surprised to discover my pastoral activity and expressed great joy at the fact that I'm a woman. Reflecting on it later, I thought that indeed, I too am very happy about it, but for different reasons.
Actually, my joy is not so much in being a 'pastor', but in the fact that my life is useful to God, whatever the function exercised; it would be a terrible waste not to live in such a way as to add value in the kingdom of God.
'This is it,' as they say in English. There would be no reincarnation, only one opportunity is given to us to live in a manner worthy of the Lord. I must dedicate my life to something that has value beyond the ephemeral. And it's easy to occupy oneself with trivialities and let time pass.
Furthermore, our society is constantly repackaging. Money, sex, adultery, and greed are sold and resold to us in a repackaged form, constituting the image of success and a good life, even for Christians who consume them indiscriminately.
Now, God gives His children the privilege of giving their lives for true, eternal things; giving their lives for His kingdom, to lift our fellow human beings out of spiritual, emotional, and existential deprivation; and this deprivation spares no one; to participate in the transformation of lives and destinies. This is a matter in which God is interested and in which He excels.
Our respective testimonies attest to this. So I love testimonies, I love hearing about these parts of life that loudly praise the goodness and actions of God. And this Sunday, we did nothing but that, tell, tell, and tell what God has done. We announced through our respective stories that God is involved in the life of His people. Such a person freed from depression, transformed spiritually, emotionally, become solid, strong, in love with God, such a person healed and the father (although far away) physically healed following prayer, such a person, converted in a dazzling way, and against all expectations, applying himself in the word of God and persevering in prayer, become a servant of God, serious and solid, such a rebellious, difficult person, a youth lived in debauchery touched by grace.
So many opportunities to rejoice in the privilege of belonging to this extraordinary God and participating in some small way in communicating His grace in lives. The other side is those who persist in living with God according to their own rules, insisting that others convince God to do their will, insisting that someone else open the door that they themselves keep closed by their attitude; and then we say to ourselves: if only they knew, if only they would accept the outstretched arm, if only they would stop the manipulation and hypocrisy and agree to do their part.
God made his own. It is a joy to serve God because He never disappoints. Some think that in His sovereignty God decides to make people sick or kill them, this is not so. Jesus went everywhere doing good, this is still the case today; healing those who were oppressed, this is still the case today. There is much to be done to make God's goodness known and experienced in our generation and it is up to each of His children to devote their lives to it. Our experience does not always live up to His word, His word nevertheless remains true.
It is up to us to align ourselves with God, to invest ourselves in learning the principles of God's kingdom, to change, to let ourselves be changed so that nothing stands in the way of the Father's full desire. It is a privilege given to each of His children to see lives changed and to participate in them, to see those who were once distant and outsiders become people of God's household. And the assurance we have is that He is always doing His part. Better still, His part was done even before the foundation of the world, we enter it, both for ourselves and for others. And this is the spice of existence for homo cristianus, because God gives each of His children the privilege of being a liberator.
Shalom!
(article originally published 04/11)
