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2012 ArchivesJanuary 2012
Humility is an unpleasant word. It conjures up images of a losing team with their heads hung low after a particularly embarrassing defeat, or a family having to stand in line to get a free meal because they have no money for food. We like the concept of humility, that people would not put themselves in front of others, but we don’t particularly care for the actuality of humility, when we see someone who has been brought to their knees by life circumstances. No one wants to have to “eat a slice of humble pie,” or be “put in their place.” It’s a great idea in theory, so long as it applies to someone else.
Not that being humble is a bad thing. It’s just so darn hard. I have to admit that 2011 taught me a lot of lessons about humility, in places where I didn’t want to recognize I needed it. There is something about coming to the end of a year that always makes me look back and sort of examine my life, and if there is one theme I see running through my year this year, it was the fact that I finally had to admit to myself that I needed help. A little background – I hate receiving help. I was brought up to believe that you fixed your own problems, not waited around until someone came along to rescue you. When I was six months pregnant and had a flat tire in a parking lot at 10pm one night, I almost ended up yelling at the Good Samaritan who stopped to help me, because I was perfectly capable of changing my tire by myself, thank you very much. (He won the battle to help me because I couldn’t figure out how to get the jack out of its little case in the trunk. Talk about eating humble pie.) I really don’t like having to ask for help.
And for the most part, I never really needed it. With a few minor exceptions here and there, I could pretty much take care of my own life and handle my own issues. Then, on January 17th, 2011, all of that changed.
For the first time in my life, armed with a tiny, screaming, insistent human being dependent on me at all times, I could no longer handle life on my own. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone this new baby. I couldn’t figure out how to put his portable crib together even though it only had two pieces (that was kind of a low point for me). And when I returned to being your pastor full time, eight weeks later, I discovered that now I couldn’t even handle things that I had been able to do quite easily in the past, like checking the mail and answering the telephone. Life became more difficult. And I felt so inadequate. For the first time in my life, I was truly and completely humbled by my inability to do anything correctly. I cried. A lot. Probably more than I needed to. But it was hard.
And you know what happened? You all came to my rescue. (OK, Andy might have helped a little too, but in my defense, he couldn’t figure out the portable crib at first either.) You brought me food. You held the baby so I could eat. You told me it was OK when I didn’t know what I was doing or forgot something I promised to do. You forgave me when I made mistakes. You didn’t condemn me for getting lost in the pastoral prayer because I was so tired I wasn’t sure what I was praying. You loved my baby almost as much as I love him, and you didn’t seem to hate me for having to ask for help, especially on Sunday morning. I cried again. A lot. Because you were so kind and caring, and because I felt (and still feel) like God was taking care of me through all of you. I felt like I finally understood what it was like when Jesus touched and loved and healed people, because that is what you all did for me.
So I just want to say thank you. No, really, I mean it – thank you! My screaming little newborn will be a wonderful, energetic, precocious one-year-old toddler this month, and I love him more than life itself. I credit you all (OK, and Andy) with getting me through this year of adjustments, and I hope you know how much I truly love and appreciate you. I really do thank God every day for you, and for the chance to be your pastor. You bless me every day in more ways than I could ever hope to repay you. I’ve learned many lessons in this last year, and I expect I will learn many more in the future. But the one that I’m sure will always stick with me is that being served humble pie isn’t so bad when you’re surrounded by the generous, loving, forgiving people of God, and that chances are, one of those people will be willing to hold the baby while you eat it.
Shalom,
Pastor Morgan
February 2012
Change is difficult. This is true whether you consider yourself young or old, adaptive or set in your ways. At our Annual Conference this year in June, our conference will be voting on a proposal to end the Kansas East Annual Conference and become a part of a new conference to be formed, called the Great Plains Annual Conference, which will encompass all of Kansas and Nebraska. The history of why this is happening is long and complicated, but the proposal itself comes, as all changes do, with a long list of pros and cons. Some people are strongly in favor of it. Some are strongly opposed. Many are ambivalent, wanting to be adaptive to the changes but also fearful of how they may be impacted by the many unknowns of the new structure. Many people involved in the process have spent years thinking, talking, and praying about how to move forward with these changes. But as we clergy have visited about it, several things have become clear to me, and I have come to believe that perhaps these are universal truths that face all of us when we face changes in our lives:
1) Being forced to change increases the chances that we will distrust the people around us. When change is happening, we are unsure of who is “on our side,” and who is “the enemy.” But we are called as the people of God to look for and celebrate the good in others, which is the spark of the light of Christ we all see. Let us embrace that everyone has some good in them, even if it is difficult to find.
2) The bigger the change is that we are facing, the harder it is to see past our own concerns. One of the things Jesus called us to do was to look out not only for the interest of ourselves and our loved ones, but for all of his children (read: everybody). Sometimes we must suffer minor inconveniences in our own spirit in order to be able to embrace what God is doing out in the bigger world. It behooves us to let go at times of our own need to see ourselves lifted up, and embrace that others are equally as important as we are. Compromise is not always a bad thing.
3) God’s plans are bigger and more perfect than the plans any of us can come up with on our own. The Bible makes it pretty obvious: we are limited, God is not. When we refuse to see beyond anything we can do ourselves, we close ourselves off to the amazing possibilities God might be doing that go far beyond our ability to imagine. Remember, when it comes down to it, God probably has a better handle on what is going on than we do, no matter how hard that might be for us to admit at times.
All in all, I will admit that change is very difficult for me too. There are questions that I would like to have answered before I commit to being on board with something that will affect my future. Fortunately for me, however, my future is not entirely in my hands, and when the anxiety of change becomes overwhelming to me at times, I can remember and rest in the promise that, luckily for us, God holds all of our futures in his perfect hands.
Shalom,
Pastor Morgan
March 2012
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