A good servant

This morning I was told about a preacher in the neighborhood who had had a nervous breakdown. Prayer was asked for him, of course, and we will be doing some things to help with medical expenses. But it set me to thinking (what doesn't?) about what this ministerial life is about.

I know that being a sensitive, I've had to shut off some of my feelings into some compartment that I won't reach into in order to be able to do the calling. Funerals bother me intensely, though I believe the ones I've done all were about closure to lives that were not going well physically in the first place. But still, I see the loss felt by the grieving loved ones and I feel for them all.

I don't know that much in the long wrong, however. I do think, believe, suspect that to love is to risk. To reach is the possibly meet failure. To give is to risk being taken. One must do all these things in the name of Jesus and then let the work take care of itself in his hands.

Paul says of this work, "If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching you have followed."

In the end, it is not about us, his messengers. It is about Christ, who strengthens us. I pray this morning that all ministers, which John Wesley believed was everyone, would know that the depth of feeling that one must have about his or her fellow man is a good thing to be relished. Don't let the failures get you. They will come. But one success. Just one person who comes to a saving faith through the work of Christ through the minister is worth all that doesn't work.

I hope the minister in the neighborhood will know this.