My time at home is coming to an end pretty soon. I'll be going to Calgary on Monday and then back to Assiniboia on Tuesday to finish the last four months of my internship. It's been a fun ride so far, and I expect the rest of this time will be no less than it has been for my first few.
When you put things into perspective, it's really eye-opening - how many times have you heard this before. Looking at my time in Saskatchewan, there's a lot of things to put into consideration. For instance, this could be the only time of my entire life where I am in this province. Seven months in my life or anyone else's lives there is almost irrelevent to the span of fifty years or more. And yet, such a small amount of time can make such a big difference. Or conversely, this could be the first of many years for me in Saskatchewan. I don't know. At this very point in my life, it would not be my choice of destination to do life in for the next bunch of years, but I wouldn't turn down an opportunity if I feel it is the right one. Even for the people in this town and church who have gotten to know me, or will get to know me, it's hardly enough time, it seems, for there to be any significant impact that will last a long time for me going in as an intern. So I'm always wondering if I can play as big of a role in their lives as they do in mine. Chances are that I won't, for obvious reasons. However, I don't think this stops me from making the most of what I'm given. So because of how gracious the people here are, it works out.
Learning about the wholeness of things has been very steadily consuming my mind recently, and there are many more things that have contributed to it.
Full time ministry has taken over my life when I turned 18. So for the past four years, I've had plenty of time to think about what being in ministry will look like for me. In turn, this plays into the shaping of my philosophy of ministry, something that pretty much all my profs and mentors tell me to revisit often. I think a lot about what I would look like when I'm working in a church in the future. I'm not sure how effective I'll be, but from this point in time, I think that's to be expected. So, since looking at the start of a new career is always filled with uncertainty, there's a lot of things and factors that affect or change how I view myself in ministry. It's been better since my internship, but it's usually kind of hard trying to get a grasp of what other people think. I'm a pretty curious person, so I would love to know what other people think of me being in ministry. At one point, there was tremendous support. But the time those comments came are long gone, and I'd like to think that I'm not the same person I am today as I was at 18, so there's got to be changes. Not to say that I don't have support from people, but that I don't get many chances to hear what they have to say anymore.
So with this final year upcoming, I think it could be a good idea for me to revisit this process to see what people think and maybe how their views have changed or not changed since the time that I first took to heart God's calling. It'd really help round things out for me, seeing what people thought back then and comparing it to where they see me going now. Even if it doesn't amount to a whole lot, it'd be very valuable in helping me evaluate my life.
One other thing came to mind today. I don't really know why I think about these things, but since it relates to the entirety of this post, I will talk about it. The best way for me to describe it is probably with some kind of lame example. As a musician or recording artist, his or her music and styles change over time. So if someone is asked to play songs that they wrote and sang five or ten years ago, how much of who they are now affects the way they play that song? Maybe who they are now completely disagrees with who they used to be, so it'd be hard for them to really reciprocate the message that that particular song had for them at that point in time. Therefore, it makes for a bit of a strange encounter. For someone that puts heavy emotion and investment into writing their particular music, it would be really hard for him or her to really do that song justice if it just doesn't represent who they are anymore. As people evolve, our tastes change as well; one event leads to the next.
When you look at it as a whole, who they used to be has brought them to where they are now. But hopefully it doesn't stop there. There should always be a hope that where they are now will continue to take them somewhere into the future. So I think it's always important to acknowledge our past, even if we didn't like them, because that past has brought us to where we are now. And where we are now, is also paving the road for us to allow our futures to unfold. Everything helps us get closer and closer to becoming whole.
This, to me, is what the essence of being a Christian is all about.
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