Blog

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the biblical stories about Hannah and Sarah since my birthday, but I also have some wonderful Hannahs and Sarahs in my life who’ve added some important things for me to reflect on particularly in this last week. I had a really great catch up with my friend Hannah on Wednesday, and my absolute favourite thing about hanging out with her is that after a couple of hours we will have covered a hundred topics and I will no matter what leave the conversation stunned with how much more I love Jesus. Every angle of what we talk about is a new exciting way to understand how awesome God is, and it’s a total blast.

She also is adept at subtle statements that leave a crater of conviction in my soul.

In her influential role at Easter Camp, Hannah has watched years of youth pastors burn themselves out in the season leading up to camp, and she very gently commented how antithetical this is to our goal of living as holistically healthy Christians maintaining a habit of sabbath.

Why would you say that to my face, Hannah?

Honestly, that was just one comment in a conversation of absolute gold, but I was still reeling from it later that night as I texted with one of my favourite Sarahs in the world who was talking about going to an Ash Wednesday service in a few hours. I didn’t go to a service this year, and at that point hadn’t even landed what I’d do for Lent this year. Last year I really enjoyed the haiku creative lent pictures as a purposeful response to my daily Sacred Space reading, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right choice this year. Then I shared with Sarah about Hannah’s words relating to rest and sabbath for youth pastors.

Why would you say that to my face, Sarah?

Then on Thursday and Friday I was really put to the test. I’d rostered myself to give the youth group talk and early bird registrations were closing at midnight on Friday. There were deadlines and things to do. But like not life or death.

Except they were!

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself, and we’re not talking health and safety policies, though I did ignore an email from someone about proactively updating our health and safety policies because I chose to set work boundaries and had spent all my hours on the things with sooner deadlines. Don’t worry, that email will get answered.

Friday morning, I deliberately sat with Jesus enjoying the view of a lazy river and sound of cicadas while consciously turning over my stress about not having practiced my youth group talk that many times and not having called every single parent who hadn’t signed up their kid for Easter Camp yet. It was actually a lovely morning. And lovely afternoon. I turned up for work around 5:30pm and was busy and distracted and second guessing my choices as people slammed me with questions and problems I didn’t have solutions to. I actually told my leaders I was pretty sure God was up to something the enemy didn’t want to happen.

I got up during the message time and spoke from my heart about how hard and beautiful and worth it the decision to follow Jesus has been in my life. I talked about how Simon, Andrew, James, and John all dropped their fishing nets and left behind families and careers because Jesus said, “Come, follow me.” I did the same, and what a wild right choice that was. We all left identities of who we thought we were and lived into the truth of who Jesus says we are. And then I did the wildest and scariest thing that I’d been pondering and praying over since my conversation with Hannah, and I gave my youth a choice. I gave them a challenge and a chance to stand up and lay down a lie of an identity the world expected of them and to pick up a calling and a name from Jesus. It was wild. It was beautiful.

One kid gave their life to Jesus for the first time.

I broke down in tears when their leader told me at the end of the night. This kid doesn’t come from a Christian family, and, in fact, has parents quite against church and Christianity. But they said yes to a call and identity as a child of God on Friday night, and I am so overjoyed to be a witness to this story.