Nothing Is Wasted

Getting to seminary is no joke. During my first month at Garrett-Evangelical as one of a handful of students in the M.A. in Pastoral Care and Counseling program, I’ve been struck by the number of students swimming upstream. These are brave people faithfully letting chips fall and making a go at new lives. They’ve been called to ministry not from postures of power and puffed-out chests, but from within the crucibles of family strife, community needs, financial struggles, and the shifting sands of vocation and identity. These are my kind of people, and they are the future of my kind of Church.

There’s nothing romantic about human brokenness. But, I believe, there is a romance to be found – and found uniquely – in human brokenness. You’ve got to squint hard with the eyes of faith (and maybe you’re like me and were born needing bifocals). That God takes up the flawed work of our hands – indeed our whole lives – and fashions something beautiful is, well, sometimes less than obvious. Amen? We pace our cages. We shed our wood. We pay our dues. We wring our hands. Clarity is hard-won.

As I shared last week with my new friends in my Vocational Formation and Church Leadership class, I’ve come to believe that nothing is wasted. Part of this epiphany came from adopting a vegan diet and committing to more environmentally sustainable practices in my daily life. [I promise: there is a connection here]. Outside of reasonably faithful recycling, I’m totally new to this, frankly. But a dear, far more conscientious friend helped me understand the cost of my completely unconscious lifestyle – what I eat, wear and consume in every sense as well as how I dispose of it – on God’s good creation and my own spiritual well-being. As I retrofit my values about sustainable living and the theology informing it (however implicit and undeveloped) onto my sense of call here at Garrett, I begin to see that, indeed, nothing is wasted. God can and will take up the fullness of our experience – where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going – and use it all. It doesn’t for a second minimize our loss or ongoing struggles. That is real, has its own integrity, and isn’t something we get to control. But it need not be the last word on our experiences.

We seldom get to know how God is tilling our soil and what God is planting in our lives – at least not as its happening – but we are asked to trust that this is precisely what is happening. We are asked to trust that the Good Farmer’s hands are steady, nurturing, and faithful to the harvest.

Consider the words of singer-songwriter Sam Phillips:

Life has kept me down
I’ve been growing underground
Now I’m coming up
When time opens the earth
You’ll see love has been moving all around us
Making waves