Tag: uncertainty

Keeping it Real On the Path to Wherever I am Going

The sense of loss and the emptiness of having traveled so far just to get to this place can be overwhelming.

kevingdrendel5 Comments

I have been writing now for about twelve years on this blog. I started it because I am a professional writer (of sorts), and I wanted to use the talents God gave me for something bigger than me.

I became a Christian in college, and that conversion diverted me from any career path I might have wandered down. I should emphasize the wandering, because I wasn’t very career-minded to begin with. I was a truth seeker, and I still am.

I thought I would go into “ministry”. That’s all I really wanted to do, but I wasn’t on a track for ministry. It was a very secular college with very traditionally secular guidance to provide. I was a crazy Christian convert who was reading the Bible and believing it.

I became a student leader of the campus InterVarsity group. We had virtually no oversight. That group of fledgling college students, like myself, was my discipleship group

I was certain about one thing: that God existed, and He had changed me. I didn’t know much of anything else.

I gravitated toward a local independent, Charismatic church about 40 minutes away. I would go to church there many Sundays, but I was a college student preoccupied with the things college students did. I mentored with the head pastor for a short time, but not long enough to make much of a difference.

I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.

These words Paul spoke to the Corinthians heavily influenced me: The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18); and God makes foolishness the wisdom of the age. (1 Cor. 1:20-21) I thought I didn’t need a seminary. In truth, I was afraid that a seminary would try to conform me by the wisdom of the age.

I should have paid more attention to what Paul said to the Corinthians: Greeks look for (worldly wisdom), but the Jews demand signs. (I Cor. 1:22) I wanted signs. It turns out that Paul was right. Worldly wisdom and demanding signs are both misguided paths.

I went off to the East Coast chasing after a church, the legend of which I heard from the man who become my best friend in college. Maybe the best friend I have ever had. A true brother in the Lord, Jesus.

We encouraged each other in that season of our lives. We both had become Christians after leading wild, existentially-angst-filled lives in our youth. We came to the kingdom of God with baggage (who doesn’t?), but we knew that Jesus had the words of life, and we were all in.

I packed my bags for a summer counseling job in a Christian camp on the south side of Like Winnipesaukee like Abraham leaving behind his homeland for the promised land. I didn’t believe I was ever coming back. Only God knew my intentions at the time.

After camp ended and I helped to close it up for the next camping season, I moved a half hour north into the last communal house left over from the Jesus People movement that swept this tourist area in the late 60’s and early 70’s. That movement of the Holy Spirit caught a bunch of migrant hippies in its current and deposited them downstream from wherever they thought they were wandering into Christian communal living.

Those communes were a legend I only heard snippets about when I arrived, but the communal spirit was still in the air. I loved it. I embraced that communal spirit for the next 40 months, and I plugged into the life of that church.

I grew up as person and as a young Christian during that time in many ways. The church was edgy. It was brash. It tried to be authentic. It dared to think big, and I ate it up. But, it wouldn’t last. (It disintegrated and splintered into many fragments not long after we left it.)

I still wanted to be in ministry, though I had no vision. I thought it would just happen. I had heard that a man’s gift makes room for itself. (I think that is in a Proverb somewhere.) But it wasn’t happening for me. I was also young and impatient and impetuous.

I had always longed for love and intimacy. I was a romantic dreamer. I was heavily influenced by Disney stories of life lived happily ever after, but I knew nothing of the promise those stories offered. I still don’t.

I married on a whim, encouraged by “a word spoken over me” that I didn’t understand, but I acted anyway. That determination to act was pivotal.

Just over 40 years have past. I have been married, now, for 39 years. It would be 40 years in November, but my wife left me almost two years ago, and I don’t think we are going to make it to 40.

I am not sure exactly where I am going here today, other than the need I feel to keep things real. I don’t usually focus so much on myself, but I have gotten used to writing to work out the thoughts in my head, and today those thoughts involve trying to make some sense of my life.

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Can We Find Peace in These Politically and Socially Tumultuous Times?

What if you could tap into peace, joy and gratitude regardless of your circumstances?

kevingdrendel1 Comment

What year in our lifetimes has been more filled with angst and anxiety than 2020? The year, 1968, might be a close rival, politically and socially. Add to the political and social tensions a global pandemic, widespread unemployment and growing economic uncertainty caused by our response to it, and 2020 is easily the most difficult year in my lifetime.

The political anxiety and uncertainty has overflowed into tensions within families, among friends, in communities and even within churches. Collective and personal anxiety is even higher, now, with the Presidential election coming up. Hope is mixed with fear. What if the right person doesn’t get elected?

Everything seems to ride on this election, but there is that nagging doubt that even an election – even if it goes “right” (whatever you happen to believe that means) – will not calm the tensions and bring peace where current circumstances are boiling on the edge of overflowing.

We know in the pit of our stomachs that the “others” will not go down without a fight. A presidential election may shift the leverage (or not), but the fight is going to continue. It isn’t going away. COVID isn’t going away. The economy teeters on brink of failure.

The mantra during the 1960’s – the closest thing to our present circumstances – was peace and love. We don’t even dare hope for peace and love anymore. The hope held out in the ’60’s has been been replaced with anger, condemnation and unkindness. The peace has been replaced with rioting, gun violence and looting.

Not that the 1960’s didn’t see its share of violence and unrest. It’s just that we don’t pretend anymore that peace and love are achievable (or even laudable) goals. We will settle for an authoritarian dictatorship or equality forced by the arm of the law and reparations wrested from the clinging hands of people who inherited privilege.

It’s easy to feel that our generation faces difficulties that are unlike the difficulties faced by others in the past. We may feel that we are alone in these times, facing the anxiety of an uncertain future, but it isn’t so.

The details of our circumstances are unique, but nothing is new under the sun: other generations have faced similar hardships and much worse. Every previous generation shared the experience of angst and anxiety of an uncertain future, just as we do.

Looking back at history in static words written on sterile pages, we may not appreciate the common experience. In the fog of our present struggle, we can’t see as clearly as we do when we look back. Our emotions are in full flight as the noise and chaos happens around us. We don’t have the luxury of viewing the present from a comfortable chair in a quiet library.

On what basis, then, can we hold on to hope? What assurance do we have that peace will prevail?

The predominant view of politics, sociology and culture in academia today is idea of the oppressed ever rising up against their oppressors in an endless cycle of unrest, violence and change. Peace no longer has value. Hope is limited to the immediate future when the currently oppressed can change places – for a time – before the cycle repeats itself.

In the middle of our present angst and unease, I am reminded of a man who wrote about peace that defies that is not dependent on circumstances and hope that lasts beyond the foreseeable future. He wrote of peace that gave him confidence and sustained him in circumstances worse than you or I have ever experienced.

If we compare his circumstances to ours, I think most people would agree they were worse, by far, than anything we have experienced. Yet, he was fed by hope, and he experienced real peace in the midst of those circumstances – despite the circumstances. His story is worth considering.

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