sitting on the bench

this is dedicated to my dear cousin who is in the thick of ministry but sometimes feeling benched.
and to my fan club.

i have some very sweet kids who have been loving on me for quite some time. and i remember when they first started, er.. flocking to me. i’ve always been somewhat of a kid magnet, but when i was serving in REVO (a worship venue at mckinney fellowship), i suddenly found myself surrounded by an entire troupe of shorty mcshort shorts.

at the time i was in charge of a lot of setup for the venue. we had to physically transform the gym into ‘church’, prepare the lyrics, set up stations for interactive worship elements, greet and put to work volunteers, prepare communion, etc. there was a lot to be done on a sunday morning and i usually found myself running ragged until the last possible moment before the doors opened. i would exhaust myself so, that by around 1:30 or 2:00 when we finally had everything put back in its place i was fit only for food and sleep. usually in that order. sometimes not. i wore myself plumb out on sundays.

it was during these chaotic preparations that i would be bombarded with these kids wanting hugs and attention and direction on how they could help. and they would clamor to be the most important one - the special one. my favorite. they insisted on having name tags made that said “assistant to trace” or something like that and when i gave them a task they would race off to see who could reach the finish line first and be The One to follow my orders. i was even delighted, and a little embarrassed, to learn that some of them had created a trace fan club complete with rules and a theme song. oh dear!

with such demands for my attention there were times when it was incredibly difficult to get my job done. sometimes i felt i put more effort into giving them little tasks and reminding them that they all dear to me in exactly the same amounts than i did setting up stations and preparing the lyrics. and somewhere in the middle of those occasional frustrations i remembered paul.

i was in the middle of a study of colossians so it was fresh on my mind at the time. however now that it’s been a few years... well, you get the idea. if memory serves, paul was either in rome (or on his way) to preach the good news - the gospel of Jesus Christ. it was an important mission, indeed. what is greater than sharing life to the dead and shining light in the darkness? but he wound up in prison. and as much of an example of joy in the midst of trials as he was, surely there must have been a few moments where he sat in chains thinking, “i should be out there telling others about Christ! Lord- why am i here when you’ve such great and important work for me that you called me to.. out there!?”

and i have imagined God’s response being something like this:

paul. you know i have called you to great and important work. i placed you on the path to rome and have given you the very words to speak. but right now i have another great and important work for you, and i have slowed you down and given you time of quiet contemplation in order for you to do it.

i want you to send a letter to some of my dearly beloved children. they need encouragement. they need support. and i’ve chosen you to be the one to do it.

i know this isn’t the best of accommodations, but i’ve chosen these surroundings because you needed to get out of the rush of life in rome to concentrate on caring for this church who needs you. and for the record, there is a prison guard that i want you to show my love to while you are here.

i think paul must have felt like he was ‘in the game’ in rome. he was ‘bringing it.’ but then he was plopped in jail and it had to feel like he was taken out of the game and had landed on the bench.

but God’s desire was not for him to ‘sit this one out’. rather, the task he had in mind for paul would wind up in the greatest selling book of all time to encourage generations of believers, not just the church he was writing to. in fact, when you look at it that way, kinda seems like maybe that might be what he went to rome for, you think? like maybe God called him to prison but that he wanted him to get there by way of rome.

here i had been frustrated with these kids who were keeping me from doing my job, reaching my rome, when really God was asking me to spend time with these kids because they would take my words and carry them with them for the rest of their lives, possibly spreading them further out as they go.

perhaps my job wasn’t even really the venue. maybe my job was these kids but that God wanted me to reach them by way of the venue. by letting them help and run to the fridge for communion juice.

when i gave attention and care to these kids i wasn’t being distracted from the real work. i was doing it. i was being Christ to these kids.

this is meant to be an encouragement to anyone who feels like they have spent time on the bench waiting to get back in the game. because perhaps God himself has called you to that very bench for a specific purpose. and it might even be that the bench is the reason he even had you in game at all. consider that when you find yourself spinning your wheels.

please don’t throw your hands up in the air and call it quits. it may just be getting started! instead raise your hands up, open them, and say “whatever you’ve got for me... i’m in.”