Burned Out

For a college student, life is stressful. We're constantly being pulled in contradictory directions, keeping up with lecture notes and endless essays, all while trying to remember to eat daily, sleep ocassionally, and hold together some pathetic semblance of a social life. It's demanding, and after not too long, it gets harder and harder to keep up with everything.

All too often, my spiritual life gets thrown by the wayside, a casualty to my hectic schedule. I forsake religion to study or to cram in a little bit more time with friends before they all go home for the summer.

I used to think this was normal, but my relationship with God is far too important to discard, even for a short time. My life is crazy, but that is exactly why I need time to be with God. Without him, I starve.

Matthew 11:28-30 says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

These are the words I need to hear right now. With my social and academic lives playing tug-of-war with my time, I feel helpless and alone. I can't do this all by myself. I need someone to help me carry my burden.

Finals are looming, but I can survive. All I need is a little quiet time to pray and the assurance that God is with me every step of the way. If I remember that he is there to comfort me when I'm frustrated and stressed and that he carries me when I think I cannot go on, then I have nothing to fear.

I'm exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I want to give up, but I am not alone. Even when the night is darkest, God is there to walk with me and lead me into the light. Now, that's a comforting thought to get me through my final exams...

Called to Serve

God certainly doesn't want me to stay in my comfort zone. Every time I show a glimmer of complacency, he throws me a curve ball. Just as I was starting to get settled into this new community I had discovered at Lutheran Campus Ministry, I got some news I hadn't expected - I had been identified as a "leader within the community."

I have lost three pastors in the past 2 years, a strange phenomenon that has come to define much of the time I have been growing in my faith. This third time, however, is different. Pastor Kacey is leaving, but I have the rare privilege of serving on the LCM Call Committee. Now, while I am bound by a strict confidentiality agreement, I can discuss the purpose of the committee. In essence, I get to help choose the new pastor.

I'm not sure what qualities made me stand out as a leader, nor do I know the first thing about serving on a church committee of any kind. It's intimidating to say the least. So far, I have come to grips with one fact that has eased my mind. I am not here to lead. I'm not on this committee to make executive decisions that will effect everyone within the community. I am a servant. My job is to listen to the concerns of those around me and to seek their input to guide my decision-making.

The responsibility is terrifying, to be perfectly honest. I am afraid that I will not be able to represent the students at LCM on the committee. But I do not need to be afraid. I am not alone. There are 7 other call committee members and God will be with me every step of the way. I have to trust that the Spirit will move through me and the committee. After all, I have been saved from sin by grace; and grace will lead us to the right person.

Taking Comfort in the Uncomfortable

I don't always know what God wants from me. Let's face it, most of the time, I don't know. But I'm getting better at figuring out when I'm doing something that God doesn't want.

Albert Einstein once said that the reason he was a scientist was because he wanted to know the mind of God. I think that's what we all want. To know what God is thinking, and what his plans are. It always seems like we're guessing. At least, that's what it felt like most of my life.

Throughout my high school years, like many people, I drifted spiritually. I still went to church, and I believed in God, but I could never see him at work in the world around me. I knew people who said that God had "called" them to do something. I could never understand what they were talking about. I had never felt compelled to do something in the life of the church.

That's not to say that I ever felt uncomfortable in my faith. Looking back, I was very comfortable in my slow drift through the motions of being a good Christian. But I never got deeply involved or invested in the ministry work that was happening.

It was not until I went to college and was looking to reinvent myself that I started feeling trapped in my little faith community. I started hanging around the Lutheran Campus Ministry on the campus at NAU. What they were doing was very different; a radical departure from my traditional Lutheran upbringing. The folks at LCM were leaving the building and doing things. My interest was piqued.

Sometime in November, I agreed to go with a small group to go do some maintenance work at a local homeless shelter and then drive down to Phoenix to package food headed to North Korea. I didn't know anyone. It was uncomfortable, but it felt right.

Later on, I went to New Orleans with a group to help the rebuilding efforts. Our living arrangements were uncomfortable. And that's when it hit me. God is pushing us to give up our comforts and go do the dirty work. God wants us to live as Jesus lived. Not a life of comfort, but a life of service.

God has pushed me out of my comfort zone. It's scary, but it feels right. This is the path I need to take. I can make a difference and live a truly Christian way of life. It will be uncomfortable, but the reward - spiritual contentedness - is well worth the sacrifice.

Where's the Open Discussion?

Hopefully, this post makes sense. If it doesn't, it's because I'm still trying to make sense of it all myself. So, bear with me.

As a Journalism and Political Science major, I am usually neck-deep in politics. The people I know in my field talk politics all the time, spouting off their opinions. I know that most of us were taught that there are two things you don't discuss in polite discussion - politics and religion. In journalism, we simply throw out the first one. Politics are our bread and butter. Sure, the discussions in my section at the campus newspaper occasionally trample politeness, but regardless of whether we agree or disagree on an issue, I always learn something from those with viewpoints antithetical to mine.

I love an open discussion, where nobody holds back their opinion. It's invigorating, and one of the reasons I chose my major. However, as I have grown in faith and have looked for opportunities to expand my understanding of spirituality, I have hit a dead end. There's the road block.

I quickly discovered that religion is the only taboo subject in a newsroom. We'll discuss ethics, we'll debate the everything from gay marriage to bank bailouts, but never do we sit down and have an intellectual discussion about our views on God.

In journalism, the only acceptable way to talk about religion is to bash it and tear it down. For the life of me, I cannot understand why talking about religion in an article automatically destroys my credibility.

As a journalist, I am also bound by a strict code of ethics. I have to be committed to an unbiased, fair and balanced approach to any topic. Yet, for some reason, these ethics to do apply to any talk about religion.

Why can't I be a respected journalist and a Christian? How do those two worlds conflict? I can't see it.

It's not that the entire newspaper industry is atheistic. I think the real problem is that it's hard to have an intellectual discussion about religion without offending someone, not to mention journalists' aversion to anything that cannot be concretely proven with scientific evidence.

Even so, I cannot renounce my beliefs to fit in with my coworkers and I need free expression. I think we could have a friendly, open, engaging and challenging discussion about religion if we would just get over our fears. I think the time has come to invite everyone to the table. Maybe if we just sat down to talk, we could figure out what God really wanted from us.

I'm ready to talk. Are you?

Emerging Ministry

Recently, I attended a conference in Albuquerque on a new Christian movement tentatively called the "Emerging Church," though it defies all attempts at being labeled. At this conference, 1,000 Christians from all backgrounds (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Charismatic, and everything in between) came to sit down at tables with people from other traditions to talk about what God wanted the church to be.

What I quickly discovered was all my my life, I had been using the word "church" incorrectly. Church is not a building where people come to worship on Sundays. Church is a community, a group of people who want to follow God, irrespective of bricks and mortar. But I believe church is much more than that. Church is not something stagnant. Church is a verb - it's what you do.

So, how can we call ourselves a church if we're not actively participating in being church? After all, Jesus didn't gather up his disciples and say, "Okay, now we're going build a cathedral." He went out into the streets to preach and to perform miracles.

That's the example I'm called to follow, and a lifestyle that I believe we are all called to emulate. So, you could say the "Emerging Church" is a fitting description of what needs to happen. All my life, the building that I called my church was a small, self-contained community that didn't branch out. The Emerging Church on the other hand, is the church emerging from the confines of the buildings.

It will not be an easy transition, but since when is being Christian an easy path to follow? As a person, I am often closed off. God is something I experience through quiet prayer and meditation. But whenever I open myself up and experience God through other people, the feeling is a hundred times as potent. My soul craves human interaction. My soul is emerging and I will follow wherever it leads.

Starting Over

After reading my friends' blogs about their struggles to follow Christ in the world, I am inspired to throw in my two cents. I will not be able to phase things so eloquently as they have, but I'd like to share my journey.

It's hard to be a Christian today. It's hard to see all the suffering around us and believe that an all-powerful, all-loving God would allow such things to happen. It's frightening, and for a time, I wondered if there was anyone listening when I prayed. Sometimes, you have to see something to believe it.

One month ago, I got on a plane in Phoenix with 31 other college students to spend a week in New Orleans doing relief work. I didn't know what to expect when we got there. As a journalist, the only expectation I had was the determination to return with a good story, a clean 450 words for the campus newspaper. I came back with more.

In these gutted houses, working alongside people who had lost everything, I saw God. God was there, in the city that had spent weeks under 11 feet or more of toxic flood water. God was there in the moldy rafters and down in the potholes filled up with oyster shells. Even now, it is hard to assign words to the experience.

One woman, who was in a wheelchair, saw the hurricane as a blessing. She told us about how happy she was that now the doors in her home could be rebuilt wider to allow her to move comfortably through her home. She wasn't angry at God. She saw the disaster as an opportunity.

I think that's why God throws hardships in our way. Just as a forest is healthier after a purging wildfire, our soul is stronger after our ego is torn down.

I have been torn down. Though I am young, I still carry a weight on my shoulder beyond my years. But God has torn me down, and I am new. The time has come to rebuild myself. I need to construct a new faith. I need a new life, and I trust God to lead me there. I'm ready to start over.