Women Officers--- Tough Times

     I wrote this in the back of my  Bible when I was in training college.  The words aren't so comforting, in fact they are quite harsh.  I did not even fully understand the reality of Officership when I read them the first time, but as the years go by, and we have faced some difficulty, I begin to really get it. 
     When we consider the cost of following Jesus, of answering His call,  we must also remember that Jesus was rejected, despised, spit upon, mocked, tortured, and ultimately crucified, for the sake of OTHERS.
     And the most glorious part of all was that He rose from the grave, victorious over it all.
    
     "Then one day, for unknown reasons, God just isn't there anymore.  The Presence that has guided us and strengthened us is gone.  Our covenant with God feels broken and void.  The Scriptures stops comforting. Every page condemns!  We continue to read out of obedience, but the Word becomes the letter that kills.

     Pastoral skills become worthless.  The church is no longer a warm, nurturing environment where friends gather.  The church expels us from the secure womb.  Evil rages against us.  The boundaries of the church are not walls keeping evil out but a boxing ring keeping evil in, so that it can come back and strike us again and again and again.  We can't run.

     I'm up a tree.  High, far out on a fragile limb I cling.  I climbed out there because God said that He wanted me there and  that He would be with me.  Now the limb is cracking off the trunk.  God isn't there anymore.  The picture changes like a dream.  I am not out on a limb, but strapped to a tree.  I am hanging from a tree.  I am dying on a tree.  Pinched in God's vise, dangling helpless, I am made into the bait of God, but for whom?
  
      Nobody  pretty wants me now.  The world wants winners.  Nothing succeeds like success.  Look good to attract the good-looking.  Die to attract the dying.  Suffer to know the being of suffering.  Cry out to know the crying out.  Hear the blood of the innocents screaming; searing pain rises from the blood soaked dirt.
     Only now am I a parable of Jesus Christ."

-David Hansen, "The Art of Pastoring"


This can really apply to any area of life, couldn't it?     Not all of our days will be perfectly perfect.  In fact, not many.  We trust in Him, no matter where it takes us or who it leads us too.  At times, we may face unbearable pain and frustration, just like Jesus.   But we trust that His purpose and plan is being accomplished in us- bringing us closer into perfect fellowship (holiness) with Him.