I've been with You in Your great adventure, all along! Wow!

July 1, 2008 Canada Day

Dear Heavenly Father,

I was reading again in my journals from 2001 (typing for my website) and again I came across my dream of an “alternative lifestyle” … and especially of a camp/ retreat ministry and/or intentional community (or even driving cross-country in a converted old school bus ) … and of course in times past, yesterday would have been the first day of Family Camp… it just seemed so kind of sad or lonely that's it's not happening anymore. It seems like an era has gone by… and maybe my dreams have gone with it.

Yet it seemed so real – so “from You” at the time… and I have truly learned that You do fulfill the dreams that are from You – in Your times and ways… and something else really “hit me” as I read… at one point I was writing down all the things You had done in my life to “prepare me” for ministry (and there have been many more since then!) … and then it hit me! Those things themselves WERE ministry, they were the plans and purposes You had for me then…

I was asking and asking You to walk with me and guide me and open Your great adventure to me, step-by-step, moment-by-moment… and in retrospect I see that that was exactly what You were doing all along… only it wasn’t exactly how I “envisioned” it – so I missed recognizing it most of the time (blind just like those Jewish people in Jesus’ time… oh dear!). I suppose I was looking for some big, “formal ministry”… but failing to understand that Your plan is my life given to You, all of it, daily, in its ongoing, step-by-step daily walk – which also, looking back, I see has been an amazing journey and adventure, truly – but not the “planned, organized, trained-for, goal-driven, recognized-by-people, paid-for, “ministry” that the world looks for, aims for, lauds, respects, desires – even demands…

Which led me to think about this four year adventure at/ with the Christian School… what was “ministry” about that? What has it had to do with my walk with You? And the walk of others? And my part in Your family/ church/ people? So much more, I am beginning to see now, than I ever saw along the way, as my eyes were kept down on the daily “drudgery” (oh dear), the daily work/ tasks/ ongoing small but seemingly never-ending problems – or should I say, challenges?!?! Adventures!?!?! (It sadly seems like when I am in the midst of them, they too often appear to me only as problems… not as the adventure with You and Your ministry opportunities they really are!