We are fast approaching the season of Lent. My denomination does not formally observe this season of fasting, but we do appreciate the value of spiritual disciplines. I appreciate them, but I don’t find them any easier to keep than many of you.
I have spent as much of my working life sitting in the pews as I have standing in the pulpit. I have spent half of my working life selling things…insurance, voice and data communications products, furniture, windows and even cars. With the other half I have pastored one other church besides the one I currently serve as well as a brief but rewarding tour as a hospital chaplain.
My point is that I have tried to cultivate my personal spiritual life in the context of what people call “sacred” and “secular” professions.
Each context has its own challenges. Practicing spiritual disciplines, even the most basic ones, has a unique challenge for me as a pastor. When I was a salesperson, my morning or evening quiet times were a distinct break from my everyday routine. The feel of the leather Bible cover in my hand, the anticipation of God meeting me in His Word or in the prayer time that followed was, more often than not, a recreational break from the marketplace and its concerns.
As a paid clergyperson, my personal retreats are no longer retreats. Since it is now my job to preach Bible passages in the sanctuary and in classrooms, as well as to pray publicly and privately for my congregation, my quiet retreats are no longer a clear break from my work day. They are no longer a recreational change of pace. I am tempted to employ every spiritual insight I find in my personal time with God towards my next class or sermon instead of just letting them sit and stew in my mind and spirit while I reflect on them. Sometimes I feel very mercenary in my Bible reading.
Praying isn’t much better. Whenever I pray I am immediately inundated with the faces and predicaments of the hundred or so men, women and children that God has called me to pastor. It is so easy to find myself dictating care memos to God about the needs and sorrows of my brothers and sisters instead of sitting with God and chatting with Him or listening for Him.
So you see, it’s no easier for your pastor to care for his or her soul than for you!
I believe that spiritual disciplines (for example: prayer, Scripture meditation, fasting, serving) can be helpful for you or for me only if we strip from our practice of them any connection with personal accomplishment… anything that seems to build us up spiritually, emotionally or even professionally. Disciplines are less like a spiritual workout designed to build soul muscle and more like a love letter to someone who lives a long way away… like a spouse or fiancé who is studying abroad for a year or serving in the armed forces.
As such, they are a celebration of what little connection the distance permits our hearts through our letters, emails and skyping. But they are also an expression of longing, a hunger that cannot be satisfied as long as we are separated. They are a means of pleading with God to be reunited with us…to lessen the distance between us. They become useless if they make us in any way more accomplished or self-sufficient. They have succeeded even if all they do is to make us long more for the one we love.
Well, I’ve done it again. I have taken an insight God shared with me and turned it into a column I promised to write. Still, maybe we both can wall off a place in our life to be alone with God this Lenten Season. Maybe this year we can let the hunger for His Presence stir like coals in our heart. Maybe we can let there be, if only for a moment, a burning desire for Him that nothing less than His Spirit will satisfy. That would be good!
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Pastor Dave Harvey, who has served as pastor of Grand Marais Evangelical Free Church since February of 2008.
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