So Sunday morning just before walking into the 11 o’clock service, a faithful Contemplative Pastor reader asks if I’m feeling better. “Growl,” says I. I think there was also the word, “No,” in there. Not a nice, “No,” as in, “But thanks for asking,” but an ugly no, as in, well insert your own imaginative and ugly response. And then we walk into worship.

That’s a bad place to be when you’re a minister, having just been about as grumpy as you could be to a friend and then have to stand there with a smile on your face to lead worship. Ooosk.

I don’t have the words to get from there to here. There, is that bad feeling of having heard my own response. Here, is what I wish I would have said. “Not really, but I will feel better.” Maybe it was the sermon on promises, maybe it was being forced to sit for an hour in front of people feeling like a fake, maybe it was the Holy Spirit. Who knows. But eventually I got from there to here.

And somehow all of our lives as believers got wrapped up in it. Are you feeling better? No, (pause) but I will. Are you healed, joyful, at peace (fill in your own spiritual goodness blank)? Maybe, but even if the answer is no, the follow up in Christ Jesus is hope. We will. Sunday’s coming, and we will.

Thanks be to God!

Okay, here’s something that happens when you’re so sick your options are either bed or propped up in an easy chair with a flipper. You catch up on a lot of movies. A LOT! I’ve watched Pirates of the Caribbean II, March of the Penguins, The Polar Express, 40-year-old Virgin, the Devil Wears Prada, and Employee of the Month in the last, hmmmm, 48-hours. Quite clearly, we don’t have cable. And also quite clearly, we don’t have cable because I don’t have a good filter for what I watch (you can see, it definitely went downhill). Maybe it’s simply coincidence, but the last three—quite popular, trendy, A-list-for-the-cool-people movies, seem to have a common thread: how do I hold in one hand being a genuine friend of the nerds and hold in the other hand fitting in with the cool people? There’s some sort of search for the authentic that rejects the backstabbing fashionista life-style that, to quote Miranda Priestly, “Everybody wants.”

I don’t have too many deep thoughts on this—cold medicine sort of prohibits such things—but after watching all these movies and reading Rob Bell’s interpretation in, Velvet Elvis, that Jesus calls all the B-team people, I think the church has something to offer to people trying to find their way out of the “becoming someone I can’t stand in the process of moving up the ladder” state we can find ourselves in. I hope that would be the experience people have of church, that we’re a place free from a culture of haves and have-nots. Would that this were the case. It would seem one step closer to how Jesus has called us to live.

I used to have this very bad habit in my daily devotions. I would miss one day, and then feel like I needed to make up for it by doing both days of reading. The thing was, one day missing wasn't such a big deal, but sometimes it ended up being three or four days of Scripture readings, so then it was significantly more time consuming. If days were missed, it was likely because my schedule got busy (yes, ministers have the same bad habits that you have), so I was already busy and then having to play catch up, which led to skipping it more until I was, say, a month behind or something ridiculous and I'd pretty much give up entirely for awhile. It's not like I wasn't still reading Scripture or praying or doing things that enriched my spiritual life, but my daily devotional--my disciplined activity--would fall by the wayside because it was difficult to catch up.

Finally it struck me... this is crazy! Catching up is a compulsion, not a healthy understanding of how deepen my spiritual life or to be in relationship with God. And it transformed my ability to keep up with a regular, daily devotion.

Enter blog writing. Christmas gets busy, a few weeks fly by with no blog entry. And then I think, "I'll have to have a really good blog for the new year, for this new start," and no earth-shattering thought comes to write about (not that any of these are in any way earth-shattering anyhow) or I can't figure out a way to make up for a few weeks of no entries, and pretty soon it looms in a way that I can't even write anything for a long time.

All that is to say, I may be the only one reading these anyhow, and if I--perfectionist Jess--am willing to extend grace to myself and jump back into the weekly writings, please (to any other readers) be willing to extend that grace as well--to me and to yourselves in whatever compulsions enslave you as you start off a new year!

Grace and peace,
Jess