"Go... I Will Show You."

Just a couple more days until study leave and then Conference.  Breathe and type.  Breathe and type...


"I ask for the desire to pray and meditate faithfully.  I ask for patience, tolerance, empathy, compassion, and gentleness.  I ask to abstain from anger, arrogance, anxiety, compulsive behaviour, discouragement, and self-importance.  I ask to know and follow Jesus more closely, seeking justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly."


Genesis 12:1-4
12Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’^*
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.


1) "...I will bless you;" "...make your name great;" "...you will be a blessing;" "...all the families of the earth shall be blessed;" "...seventy-five years old;"


2) My first thought is to when I first decided to try seminary.  I was NOT going to be a minister.  Neither was I going to be gay or live in rural Canada ever again, Edmonton had been more rural than enough rural experience for me.  I remember sitting in the middle of my apartment in Cloverdale, where I lived at the time and sorting through all my worldly goods, which were few enough at the time, deciding what was going with me to live in a bedroom just off campus.  I remember a great heap of paper that I'd hauled with me from Edmonton where I'd done my undergrad studies.  I sorted every piece of paper from every file.  I got my entire undergraduate degree down to a single box for storage.  That box went with me to a small village of 325 people in rural Saskatchewan after I was ordained as a minister, and then to Brandon, Manitoba.  But there it remained.  It got sorted again when I picked up my life from Brandon to return to the coast to be closer to my queer community.  I think I have a single file folder left.  I even left most of my library in Brandon.  Over and over again, I've heard a call to leave everything behind.  It doesn't get any easier.  What am I being called to leave behind now so I can "Go from my country?"


3) What is the invitation in all this? To remember that I've "gone from my country" before, and I'm so grateful that I did.  I'm so grateful for who and what I've become by going "to the land God has shown me."  God leads me exactly to where I lease want to be and yet to where I am most happy and fulfilled!


"Holy One, thank you."


Breathprayer: "Go... I will show you."