Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Molly is not only a child of Jamie (and Page) Morris (who you probably do know), Molly was a child of this church.  She served as a Young Adult Volunteer in the Presbyterian Church in college.  She spent three years working on her M. Div. at San Francisco Theological Seminary, during which time she preached her first sermon at this church.  She served a mission semester abroad with refugees in France.  She served a church this year as an associate for family and children’s ministries. She has passed all the ordination exams and hurdles required by the PC(USA), which are steeper than any other Protestant denomination.  And still she is not done.  She cannot yet be ordained.  There is still one more requirement.  This year Molly will be doing her Clinical Pastoral Education, in which she will serve—most likely—in a hospital setting processing the psychological, pastoral, and personal implications of the multiple levels of interactions, health, responses, family dynamics and stressors that happen to human beings.  Then she will receive a “next” call to the form of ministry for which God has been preparing her.  It is easy to see that Molly has been engaged in ministry all along.  And when the next call comes, it will be “easy” to see why Molly needed the preparation she has received—including all the hard days that necessarily come along with being a human.  And then she will be required to take continuing education all the years of her “formal” ministry, until she retires.

First of all, it is in looking backward that we gain perspective on how God has been readying us for new things (Moses hidden in the cliff of the rock while God passes by sees only the back of God – God reveals that he has been there).  We should not look backward with longing – lest our tears turn us into a pillar of salt and we miss the next stage (think Lot’s wife!).

Second of all, there is ministry all along the way for all of us.  Jesus’ disciples had to be ongoing learners in their journey with him, as he continued to teach them and reveal to them what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Some requirements are hard.  And we’d rather circumvent them.  “Can you suffer what I suffer?”, asks Jesus.  “Take up your cross and follow me,” says our Lord.  It’s not always a walk in the park, but it is always a walk toward resurrection.

There are days we’d rather not go to class, frankly.  We have this treasure in earthen vessels.  Jesus’ disciples couldn’t stay awake in the garden.

And days we don’t get it, even though we’ve been disciples for a long, long time.  “Have you been with me all this time, O ye of little faith?”

But even when, maybe especially when things look particularly bleak, the Lord shows us that yet, once again, God is doing a new thing.  The empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, breakfast on the beach, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the acts of the Apostles – a HANDFUL of ordinary humans sent to proclaim the GOOD NEWS, teaching everything you have been taught.

Your sister in the journey,