The Epic nature and amazing opportunity of the otherworldly realties at play could be lost on the discontented pastor.
The vocation of the Pastor in the living and dying mundane rhythms of small town Maine isn’t little. It is full of chances to show forth the towering visions of the gospel as they point us to Jesus and bring breathtaking vistas of the glory of God in the face of suffering.
This isn’t a boring rhythm; it is the very marrow of life itself. Jesus doesn’t do boring little things. All that Scott did for us as a pastor wasn’t boring or obscure because he showed us Jesus. They weren’t little things. Far from it, they were signposts to the deepest longing of our hearts – that the kingdom of God is coming.
But even now in the daily vocational rhythms of the Pastor, God points us to the reality that the Kingdom of God is also a present, yet unfulfilled, reality.
That is the kind of epic stuff Jesus is doing in the common rhythms of living and dying in your town.
Pastors, your vocation is threaded within the fabric of what God is doing for a broken world.
God ordained the ministry after the fall to point us back to the very realities of the covenant of life in the face of post fall rhythms that bring death.
But God doesn’t want your contentment to be based on something so little as writing books, retweets, speaking engagements, church attendance, or your sinful evaluations and covetousness of other pastors or ministries.
Jesus wants you, and He is rescuing you from such little things by training you to rest your contentment solely on his massive performance and affection for you. He is jealous for His glory and will train your heart to trust Him, though it be painful. He is healing you from you.
Defeating despairing rhythms isn’t the problem. They were never meant to satisfy you.
