Ah, the Advent season. That time of year when some churchy types take great joy in reminding everyone that it's about watching and waiting, not shopping, darn it, and some other churchy types take great joy in saying “it’s Merry CHRISTmas, not Happy Holidays!,” darn it, and we all take great joy in eating too much sugar and listening to the Beach Boys’ “The Man With All The Toys.” Or at least we should.
I’ve been lazy about blogging, mainly because my job is taking up a lot of my creative energy. That’s a good thing – when I started this job, I didn’t think I’d get much of a chance to really be creative at all, but lately a lot of what I do is creative and challenging and fun and maybe even theological and all of that good stuff.
Last week I presented a case study on Communications & Culture Change loosely based on David Lose’s work in the whole “Tell a Better Story”/belonging & purpose area, along with Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment and Seth Godin’s All Marketers Tell Stories. It was fun to have a chance to do something a little more challenging and something related to the things I’m most interested in and passionate about, and my ideas were really well-received… so much so that I got to present it all over again for a group of executives this week (who also loved it), and then again today for a smaller group of people who couldn’t be there the first time.
If you had told me a year ago that I would be passionate about shaping corporate culture and genuinely see it as a great opportunity to do ministry, I probably would have laughed.
I used to say, “I got tired of working for the Man, so I’m going to work for the Man Upstairs.”
As if the church is the only place to do that.
Silly me.
I have had so many amazing conversations lately, so many little joys and signs of light in my days at work, and so much of a sense that a) God wants me to be right where I am right now, and/or b) when I decided to hold off seeking a pastoral call because it didn’t work with where my personal life is at right now, God was like, “Oh yeah? Well then, I’m going to have to go ahead use you here. How do you like them apples?”
God is also a big fan of Matt Damon in my head, apparently.
Anyway, it all has me thinking that for each of us, the ripple in the water of the universe that we make is inevitably so much bigger than the boundaries we try to draw around it. And the body of Christ – the “corporate Corpus Christi” if you will – the “whosoever,” as I like to say – is so much bigger than the group of people who call themselves the church.
And the God who became a human just like you because He loves you like a fool is already using you for something surprising today, and is planning something miraculous right now, no matter what you think is on hold or broken or not quite how you planned it to be.
I am still very much in an area of watching and waiting in so many areas of my life... and doesn't *that* get terribly old and tedious? But isn't that also most of what life is? It seems like for 33 years I've almost always been watching and waiting for something, so maybe it's less about getting to whatever you're waiting for and more about enjoying the journey.
At least that's what everyone's inspirational posters on Pinterest seem to tell me.
And also what I suspect is true, even though I still kind of hate it.
But aside from the waiting and the waiting and the waiting that makes up so much of our terrifyingly short lives, I also feel like I'm learning to be more authentically and expansively myself, to feel less of a desire to apologize for my imperfections even while I pray that they might be transformed to serve others, to listen for what God is calling me to more and more, and to be less cemented in all of my preconceived ideas about what that is supposed to be.
Happy Advent!
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