As seems to be the case every semester, the surge of assignments has reached a critical mass such that other features of my life that I desire to occur regularly and frequently instead recede to a minimal or non-existent status. I have barely cooked anything significant and certainly tried making something new since about a month ago. I have also not intentionally exercised in about a month. Going to bed each night tired I kick myself even further as Bible and prayer books sit by the bed largely unused because whether morning or night I feel too tired and too pressed for time. Ostensibly I could drum up the excuse that I'm doing important theological and ministerial things that take up my time - after all, I'm slogging through intense theology readings, learning more and more about the history and variegated character of the Baptist tradition, and serving a little clapboard church in Chapel Hill. But I'm also a representative on the Divinity Student Council, the historian for Internationally-Minded People of Faith, a DSC representative to Graduate and Professional Student Council, a member of the University Judicial Board, and a member of the Div School's International Studies Committee. I audit an extra class as I have done every semester and I work about once a week for my second job at Elmo's Diner. In the next three weeks and change I must complete three papers and one take-home midterm alongside maintaining the regular course readings.
Yes this is too much, and I'm not exactly sure how I fell into all of it. Either way, this doesn't seem to be the path to "pastoral self-care," a topic that my classmates in the Student Pastors' Association are pursuing in a series of lectures this year. I've already decided that next year I intend to drop nearly all of these commitments - probably my only extracurricular involvement will be IMPF. I need to spend that time being refreshed, getting focused for the future, learning skills and disciplines that will serve me when I leave the Divinity School world.
At the end of the day, I need to keep asking the question, what does God require of me? And I know the answer is something different from a rush to do everything. The call to discipleship is never a call to clutter, but in fact a call to single-mindedness and steadfast dedication. I hope that what I take away from my time here at Duke is not some sense of pride or accomplishment that comes from being "involved." I hope instead I can look back and see that I was steadfastly committed to the ones I love and who love me - that I have pursued nothing short of faithful communion with God, with Kelly, with each of my friends who have sharpened me in so many ways.
Two days ago, n one of those rare occasions lately in which I did some actual reflection and prayer time, I read that day's snippet from Oswald Chambers'
My Utmost for His Highest. Although I'm certainly further away theologically from Chambers than when I was first introduced to him, I appreciate his insights much more now. Here in this selection he is actually addressing theology students. I find the last paragraph of "The Unheeded Secret" to be most especially relevant:
"My kingdom is not of this world." John 18:36
The great enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo the kingdom of God is within you," a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives in the shop window. It is the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life.
We have to get rid of the plague of the spirit of the religious age in which we live. In Our Lord's life there was none of the press and rush of tremendous activity that we regard so highly, and the disciple is to be as His Master. The central thing about the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men.
It is not its practical activities that are the strength of this Bible Training College, its whole strength lies in the fact that here you are put into soak before God. You have no idea of where God is going to engineer your circumstances, no knowledge of what strain is going to be put on you either at home or abroad, and if you waste your time in over-active energies instead of getting into soak on the great fundamental truths of God's Redemption, you will snap when the strain comes; but if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in God on the unpractical line, you will remain true to Him whatever happens.
Amen.
