“Is Ready…” The title of this post seems a bit odd to me. Well perhaps because the thoughts that drove me to write this evening stem from “not being ready” and yet “I’m ready” is the phrase that kept coming to mind as I started. So what does it mean? Why am I ready? and why am I not???
My life has been a bit hectic this Lent and preconference season. As I seek to prepare myself for the Resurrection that was, and also for the possibilities of World Conference, I find myself stumbling a lot. I find myself engaging in spiritual practices in a chaotic undisciplined and sporadic pattern. But then a lot of the aspects of my daily schedule have fallen into that mix.
Perhaps of more importance in the short, though not long term is my preparation for Sunday. Tomorrow is my only full day off this week, I had every intention of having my sermon for Sunday written by now, and well it is no where close. In part this is that in the mornings before work I am often unable to find myself in focus, in part it is that I set the past three evenings aside for it, as I planed to start after getting off work. However two of the three I ended up working long and not being able to, and today I had every intention but after work I went and spent a little bit of time with friends, before coming home, and right now I sit here unsure where the last 4 hours went. I ate, I did a few other things, including giving directions to a member of the Kirtland congregation who is planning to go with me on Sunday to Elyria where I will be Speaking, but I never found myself in that place to work on a sermon. Perhaps part of my struggles this week is while I am joyful to spend time with my sisters and brothers in Elyria, this will be the first Sunday I will not be in Kirtland since entering the Pastorate. Then I’ll be in Kirtland for two Sundays, then gone for two for World Conference….
Yet I feel ready… I feel ready for something, I just don’t know what. Am I ready for further calling? (I think the answer is Yes) am I ready to embrace the mission of Community of Christ with my sisters and brothers around the globe and help bring forth the peaceable community we fondly call Zion? (I hope the Answer is yes), am I ready to embrace what comes next? (Maybe) am I ready to move? (I’m starting to think yes)… Am I ready for companionship (perhaps, but I need to find her or her I or better yet both of each other). I want to do something meaningful, I want to be somewhere where I can learn and grow as a person, and while I am perhaps doing that here, I feel a bigger move is needed, a bigger change. The problem is I don’t know where to look, what to ask for, where to apply… and even if I did I wonder if my self doubt would come into play and hinder me from recognizing it or from engaging it… I just don’t know. I feel some of the possibilities I feel called toward I can’t engage in at present do to the ministerial office I currently hold, while the one I am called to, would allow me to engage in these ministries more fully.
So this is what I’m going to do offer this prayer “Holy One, I am ready… Please help me have the strength, insight, courage and faith to figure out what, where, how I am called and to engage in that ministry and those life decisions which I am ready for, so that I may share your love with your creation, allow your creation to share it with me, and work together with your creation, with you, in bringing forth the peaceable community that your Son proclaimed and your Spirit calls us to. Help me truth you more fully, and be willing to risk more completely in my response to you. In the holy name of the teacher of Peace, A-Men.”
Peace be with you,
— Lyle II