I came into the ol' orifice today (Michael Scott reference), which I have been doing less frequently as of late. Sometimes, I find the office comforting. Other times I find it lonely, so I stay away. One of the great advantages of being at a large church–and the great disadvantages of being at a small church–is that at a large church, there are other people around all the time. Other staff that you work with; probably other pastors. Other people just walking through the office! Even for introverts, having people around is typically a comforting thing, even if you don't want to necessarily engage them. I don't know the statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if the burnout rate for pastor's of small churches is far higher than the rate of burnout for pastors at larger churches. Some of that has to do with unrealistic expectations of what one person can accomplish, but I also think it has to do, at least a little, with the loneliness. If burnout isn't higher, I bet you depression is.
In any event, I don't feel burnt out or depressed, which I am thankful for, but that wasn't why I started writing in the first place. The reason I was writing was the stack of very old sermon manuscripts on my desk from some Pastor I've never met, and the wind howling past the window, and the radiator that bangs when the heat comes on and then never really heats up quite as well as I wish it would, and the carpet that is falling apart so that little carpet balls form that look like little fabric tumble weeds that get kicked across my office floor, or the half-empty cup of water and the Dunkin' Donut's cup that was left in here this past weekend by someone–a teenager? someone on the worship team?–who was using my office, and the broken furniture and the many, many books I will never have time to read that are nevertheless on my shelves so that, in the event of an argument, I can simply wave my hand at the bookshelf and, without lying, give the subtle reminder that I may have actually acquired all this knowledge, and if so, perhaps it would be silly to argue with me after all.
It's just life.
Life that has ups and down and joy and depression and answers and usually more questions than we care to admit. Life that sometimes seems like it makes sense and other times seems like there is no rhyme or reason; life where some people prefer platitudes and others people prefer to just sit in the silence and wait it out. Life where some people try to escape, and others try to engage it, and in the end, we're all just doing the same thing: trying to make sense of life.
There are those who view life through the lens of meaninglessness; those who view all situations as if they are predetermined by a cold and uncaring biological steamroller. The heat, broken as it might be, is nevertheless an accomplishment of man that keeps us from the cold wind outside; it's a testament, at least, to how far we've come and how much we can get done and how much better life is because we, the human, the biological marvel and miracle that we are, have evolved not just to give ourselves heat in the cold but to actually sit and wonder about having heat in the cold.
Others view life through the lens of God; my pastor-friend I have never met was one of those men. Here he is, writing sermon after sermon year after year, telling whoever will listen that there is more hope than they may see now, that there is another way to make sense of things, another way to interpret the events of the times, another moment that we can look forward to that will make sense of all of the moments that don't make sense. He preaches that sermon, and then finds, many years later, that the same sermon he once preached is apt again. "The times", "the events that are unfolding", the "wonders", the "mysteries"...a decade later, they are still the same. Different on the surface, but the same underneath. The same struggles, the same need for hope.
Life.