I am a minister without a flock of even a single parishioner.
I long to share the love of God with someone, and pray with them, because it is
in those actions that I can truly feel God’s love and caring and help them do the same. People need to
hear the Gospel—not the gospel that is preached in so many of our churches
today. The Gospel has nothing to do with Jesus’ divinity, or lack of it. It has
nothing to do with who his father and mother were or what special qualities
they had. It has nothing to do with miracles. The Gospel is in the words Jesus spoke. And people need to hear the words
he spoke, but more importantly they need to feel them in their hearts. They
need reassurance. They need to know of God’s infinite love—infinite, but
individual. People need to know that God’s love extends to them personally—that
God carries each of us very close to God’s great heart, always. They need to
feel God’s comfort and encouragement when they are grieving.
I have, over the years, attempted to convey that love
to so many people. At first I wrote letters in the hope and expectation it would
help me make friends, but I soon learned to expect nothing. I still hoped, but
eventually I gave that up, too. For years now, I have written letters sharing
God’s love with no expectations and no hope. I guess that is what altruism is.
Yet I am in no way altruistic, for in every letter I write, in every
conversation I take part in, I issue an unspoken, yet no less real, invitation
to take the relationship to a deeper level so that we can experience God
together. In that invitation, I suppose, I still hope and on some level expect
that it will happen.
Yet my invitation has never been accepted. I expect
that each of us experiences God in his/her own way. I cannot find fault or be
angry with any individual. But when
after years not one single person has called upon me to share my experience
with them and they with me, I have to accept that there is something wrong with
me—that there is something my character that drives people away or at least
stays their approach. So, I can’t think of a single person I could call upon in
times of spiritual crisis and know that they would respond. And I can’t think
of a single person who would call on me.
People need to be ministered to. I need to minister. We
will never get together.,