And then I turned 45
Last week, our neighbors invited us over for a 'meet the neighbors' gathering. When I was talking to Don, the proposed host, he mentioned that he had a son who was about to turn 16. Do you want to know what I said? Mildly hip, not-too-old, Brent? No, I did not say something like,
"Oh that's great."
or
"How cool". Nope.
And instead I said,
"uh-oh, watch out."
crap, here I am 25 years old speaking as if i am 45, and that my life is reduced to being scared of young people getting their driver's licenses.
i must go now. i need to change my Depends.
A Question from A Russian
Today I was making my daily/every-other-daily browse through craigslist to see if there is a couch that Sarah and I can buy used from somebody. We've been looking for over a month, but are in no real hurry b/c we have a functional set right now, just kind of old/sweat stained, etc. Today I found something that we liked and so I went over to the ladies house to get a preview before dragging sarah over there this evening to look for herself, somewhat of a screening process to save precious evening ours. I noticed that the woman had an accent over the phone as I had to ask her to spell several words b/c I couldn't understand her. When I rang the doorbell, we greeted each other and somewhere in the introduction, she mentioned something about Russia, or being Russian. Yada yada yada, we talked about the couches and she was showing me the rest of her house. And then came her questions to me. "So what type of school are you in?" "Seminary." "Oh." pause. "I'm training to be a pastor." pause. "Why do you want to do that? I mean, you must really want to do that." "Yeah, I would like to work on a college campus, I really enjoy college students." "Oh."
So my question to myself as I think about this brief banter is this, "Is the reason that I am going to Seminary because I really like college students?" That to me seems a little shallow, and besides, the reason that I want to do this type of work is because the Lord has changed my heart and life and has given me a great desire to interact with others and be in their lives and to see the gospel change them. But I didn't say this. Why? Partially b/c I think she wouldn't get it. But also partially because I am scared to say something like this. Am I ashamed of my calling? Scared of it? Scared of talking about God with other people? Probably a combination of all of those. Sometimes I feel like no one takes preachers seriously anymore. Its like we're living in an alien world fighting an alien battle, while all the postmodern humans just kind of look at us and don't care one way or the other about what we do. I need Jesus, i realize that.
