call me pasturescott

ministers, not messiahs.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

~ Bishop Kenner Untener, October 25, 1979

[this shot is for Sandy on her fifth Mother’s Day without Graham; it symbolizes her world blown apart by grief for a son lost too soon, even as her feathery faith – on precarious strings – holds it together…in hope]

Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.

– Charles H. Spurgeon

“Hope is the thing with feathers…”

– Emily Dickinson

“Hope is revolutionary patience” says Anne Lamott. What is patience, then? It is the yet-to-be-realized longing of a looking soul. It is a parent’s eyes glued to yonder horizon, knowing that one day there will be a reunion and a feast…while, for now, there’s only the quiet vigil of sighing and dreaming.

The heart knows a secret bravery that is not celebrated with medals and speeches, but with unabated courage to take every day as it comes. It looks like flowers on a grave, instead of beside a child’s Mother’s Day card. Like sending a text or making a call to another mother who has her kids and wishing her a happy day.

Joy, in this world, is not sung, it is whispered; it is pomp and circumstance under the breath, minus the fanfare and marching. But ever so often it hears the instruments tuning and warming and tilts its head, satisfied the prelude is not too long now.

To witness up close such incarnated hope each day – along with every hollow milestone – is a thing of beauty. Sandy’s unpretentious, faithful life is a blog gone viral in the heavenlies, a sermon without pounded pulpit, a book you weep through to get to the next wonderful page.

Her spirit is a feather for she is the embodiment of stained-glass hope.

Proverbs 31:29-31
Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.

Selah

podcast: simon gets [another] lesson in fishing

Simon Peter may have been a pro at fishing but he still had a lot to learn about discipleship. (Don’t we all?)

Let’s talk about that today on the Pasture’s Podcast.

I don’t know when I’ve had more fun doing a podcast. That’s actually saying something, too, because I love every podcast I’m part of.

Joy is what I felt. It seemed as if the pleasure of the Father was streaming back-and-forth between John and myself as we conversed about gospel truth, living faith, and, yes, fishing…Simon Peter style.

Luke 5:1-8
On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret,and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat.And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

I hope you’ll tune in and get a sense of what I’m talking about. For me, you can’t beat a dialogue that seems to be carried on the easy winds of divine grace. It’s effortless and oh so inspiring!

My friend and mentor, John Brown, joins me for a new edition of the Pasture’s Podcast, and we’ll swap thoughts and insights on not settling for less than the life our Lord is making available to us.

As we were talking I couldn’t help but think of the quote from C.S. Lewis,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us; like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
– C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

So, with that, let’s go to an ancient Sea and learn how we might trade in our half-hearted lives for Another Life where greater things happen in the deep end of the ocean.

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