Revisiting the Word Rock

I move in silently into this day and look through the things I wrote from yesterday.  I started a page with fellow youth ministers eager to ponder about this relentless call to reach out to the young.  To change and be changed.   Yesterday I wrote about my conversations with them.  This introspection has been 6 years in the making.  I've finally decided to cast my net out into the sea, in faith.

Unlike my occupation, I am quite passionate about youth ministry.  It's something I can probably talk about for hours.  Most people would probably look at it as some kind of glorified way to chaperone young people and herd them into a place where they will not cause any trouble.  But, I don't think about it this way.  There's more to ministering than "chaperoning".  

Yesterday's talk reminded me about how faith can make our hearts soar and believe the impossible.  It can make us deepen our hope.  

I pondered upon the words exchanged and my memory holds on to the word rock.  So much of my life has fallen apart because I have not built my faith upon the Rock.  Sometimes the journey takes me places where I end up building it upon preferences and desires that are just my own.  It's weakened because I am weak.  

The Rock I hold onto is God's Word.  His words that often elude me are the words that beckon me back.  It's not easy to keep up reading His Word.  The distractedness of my thoughts fail at absorbing their meaning.  Yet, they have said that  His Word is alive.  And it beckons.  It keeps beckoning me until I respond.

This morning I find myself looking into what I believe about the Rock of my foundation and how I fail at staying steadfastly attached to my foundation.  The work week is coming ahead and as much as I long to just stop and pursue other things, it is not yet time.  I find myself sitting at the same desk and working out the same issues.  But then I realized that my displeasure in the workplace can be a way for me to deepen my faith while I wait for something better.  While I wait for better times.  While I wait to be called out of my cubicle and grow.  So I latch on and hold to my Rock.  For it will stand through the craziness of my circumstances.  

I ponder upon the words from Fr. Ronald Rolheiser yet again, 

The Highest is more clearly experienced when we are giving ourselves over to what is highest.  The messiness of life also leaves us tempted in another way, namely to try to live antiseptically.  Since we cannot live and love deeply without hurting, without pettiness, enslaving and humiliating entanglements, without smear, we opt not to live and love deeply at all.  So we hang loose, refusing depth.  We stay away from all that might hurt--or heal--us deeply.

May I be able to live fully this life I have been given.  Regardless of what circumstance.  Holding fast unto the Rock of my foundation and maybe in some way, I'll soon be a little rock for others.