This action prompted me to reflect a
moment on my ordination. I have often said that I worked
for ten years to get to this point, but it is really
much, much longer. Really since my first discovery of
a life alive to God when I was a student at Rice University—and
that is MANY more than ten years ago. There, in the
gentle embrace of a small Baptist church, I experienced
powerful, redemptive love. We Rice students were their
life, their ministry. They gave themselves away for
us. They fed us, drove us places, kept us overnight,
offered their wisdom and friendship and time and energy
for us. All who came through that ministry were touched
for life; some of us went into the life of vocational
Christian ministry.
About 15 years ago, I contacted that
church to let them know the power of their ministry
in my life. With great graciousness, they invited me
into their pulpit, and I was able to see familiar faces
and again sense the power of their love. Just a small,
obscure Baptist church, knowing their call: care for
those Rice students. They had no idea how all this would
turn out. They just knew what they were supposed to
do at that point in their lives.
Surely it must have been frustrating
to them. I so well remember the choir director working
vainly to teach me to sing harmony. I never did catch
on, despite multiple private lessons. And our Sunday
School teacher, a man of enormous learning (he himself
had a Ph.D. in chemistry from Rice University), wondering
if he could ever pound into our heads even the basics
of Christian faith and how to integrate our faith into
our academic and personal lives.
Work with university students is so
transient—we come, we learn what we can, we graduate,
we move away. Never are we contributing members; never
can we support the church financially, or with many
acts of service. Barely surviving academically, still
highly immature socially and emotionally, living financially
precarious lives, we turn to them for comfort and support.
Just a bunch of takers, really.
Yet for those fellow “takers”
that I have remained in contact with, I notice that
we have all eventually turned into a bunch of givers.
We are living out the pattern set for us—serve
where we are planted, give all we’ve got, don’t
worry about ensuring the outcome, but know this is the
path of real joy. Very much like those flowers now in
the compost pile: give away the joy of their color and
brightness, represent the love of my friends, and then
die in a way to bring even more nourishment and life
to others.
The gospel of flowers. The gospel of
Jesus.
