As twenty-somethings finish their studies and look toward the future, the question of vocation is urgent and, it seems, particularly difficult to answer amid other pressures and responsibilities.
One of the best things about Advent is the presence of John the Baptist, that hair-shirt-wearing, locust-eating, wild-man prophet, the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
My grandfather died two weeks ago, a few months short of his 89th birthday, in the same room where he was born. Most every night of his long life, he slept under the same roof, in the farmhouse where his parents had settled just after their marriage.
As I celebrate four years as a pastor and priest of Christ’s people, I find my life and the work of ministry to be full of joy, more than I could have ever imagined.