The Rushed Contemplative

(Thank you to my mom, Marilyn Ehle, for the title of this post. She is a far better writer than I, with numerous articles published online, including http://www.secretsofsuccess.com/article/superwoman.html and several at http://tmdevotionals.com/women/ .) I confess that I have often wondered whether God answers prayer. More specifically, I have wondered whether he answers my prayers. That’s a big confession for someone who has been a born-again, Bible-believing, conservative, evangelical Christian his whole life. I’ve heard all the Sunday School lessons and sermons and Bible studies on how, why, when, and for whom God answers prayer. I know the three standard answers ( Yes , No , and Wait ). Sometimes, though, it seems that the No answers outweigh the Yes ones, and my tendency too often is to question the God Who Answers rather than the one who prays. There is a constant struggle in my mind about what to pray about, and even moreso about when I should solicit the prayers of others.

Halfway through my first semester at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, I am facing an acute and quite unexpected sense of inadequacy for the pastoral ministry. It’s not a particularly comfortable feeling for one who has enjoyed roughly twenty years of success in military, college, and professional experience. Interestingly – perhaps ironically – I remain strongly convinced that God has not only led me to seminary, but is continuing to lead me into ministry. So what is it that is making me feel so inadequate? Let me say first of all that it is not my grades. I am enjoying all of my classes – even Greek, in spite of the challenge of memorizing dozens of finely-nuanced forms of verbs, nouns, participles, articles, and other grammatical elements that I haven’t thought about in any language for at least a dozen years. One of my other classes, though, is definitely contributing to these feelings of inadequacy. The class is focused on laying a solid theological foundation for past