Rediscovering ministry

I started today with a prayer led by a friend and former tutor of mine. It went:

Teach us good Lord, to serve you as you deserve; 
to give and not to count the cost; 
to fight and not to heed the wounds; 
to work and not to seek for rest; 
to labour and not to ask for any reward, 
save that of knowing that we do your will, 
through Christ our Lord.  
Amen 
(St Ignatius Loyola 16th Century)

 

As I sit on the train on the way home I can't help but take in the conversations around me, the people parted from families by the strain of business in the city, the people returning from visits with ill relatives, the person returning to work after illness, the young couple cuddling opposite and the many more lives that rest in this carriage with me.

As I sit and absorb snippets of these lives I am taken back three years to lectures with that same tutor when I realised for the first time that I was to stand in the gap, to bear these lives and many others before God. I am also taken forward 2 years from there to my ordination when I was give an "unfailing love" for His people and charged to "minister Christ's love and compassion".

Ministry was never going to be easy and today has brought with it the highs and lows of serving God. I have already said in my Lenten reflections that the wilderness is by its very nature difficult, despite it all though our prayer must always be that we do the will of God.

I pray with all my heart that I may hold all those to whom I minister before God, I pray that I may be as Christ to them and I pray that in it all I may do the will of God.