Something is changing. Not enough to point to or easily explain, but enough that you can feel it. You’re not where you were, but you’re not where you thought you’d be either. If you’re honest, part of you still wants movement—clarity, direction, something that feels like progress. But something else has begun to settle alongside that desire. A different kind of awareness. Maybe this season is not just about waiting. Maybe it’s about learning what you can carry.

Not Everything Is Light

We tend to think of what we’re asking for as good…and it is. Clarity is good. Calling is good. Opportunity is good. But good does not mean light. Some of the things we are asking God for carry real weight: responsibility, influence, leadership, trust. Weight, if received too early, doesn’t just sit in our hands—it shapes us, or it distorts us.

The Question Beneath the Question

We often find ourselves asking, “When will this happen? When will this open? When will things finally move?” But there is another question underneath those questions, one that is quieter and more revealing:

Who am I becoming that can carry this well?

Because the deeper issue is not timing. It is capacity.

Formation Before Fulfillment

We live as if fulfillment is the goal. But in the life of faith, fulfillment without formation is fragile. It can look like arrival, but it cannot sustain itself. This is why so much of God’s work happens out of sight—not because it is less important, but because it is more. God is not just preparing outcomes. God is preparing people…people who can carry what they’ve been given without confusing it for who they are, people who can hold responsibility without being consumed by it, people who can move when it is time and remain when it is not.

What Is Being Formed in You

If you pay attention, you can begin to see it. Your reactions are changing. You are less quick to force clarity and less driven to prove something. There is a growing steadiness…not certainty, but steadiness. It is the kind of steadiness that does not depend on everything working out, the kind that can hold tension without needing to resolve it immediately. That is capacity, and it does not come quickly.

Why Timing Matters More Than We Think

It is not just that things take time. It is that we take time. There are ways of being that cannot be rushed into existence: trust that is not dependent on outcomes, identity that is not tied to role, leadership that is not fueled by urgency. These are not added on later. They are formed now, often in ways that feel slow, hidden, or even unnecessary…until you realize they are the very things that will allow you to carry what comes next.

What Happens If We Receive It Too Soon

We do not often consider this. We assume delay is the problem. But sometimes the greater risk is arrival without readiness. When that happens, we grasp, we control, we over-identify. We try to hold things together that were never ours to hold alone. And slowly, the very thing we longed for becomes something we have to manage…or something that begins to shape us in ways we did not intend.

What God Is Actually Doing

God is not withholding. God is forming. Forming a self that can receive without clinging, that can lead without controlling, that can carry without collapsing. This kind of formation is quiet and rarely feels dramatic. But it is the difference between having something and being able to hold it faithfully.

Stay With the Work

You may not see movement yet, but something is happening. Capacity is being formed. Weight is being learned. A deeper steadiness is taking shape…not so you can finally arrive, but so you can carry what is entrusted to you without needing to protect it, prove it, or perform it. So stay…not just because you have to, but because this is where the work is. And when the time comes, you will not just be ready to receive it. You will be ready to carry it.

There’s a moment… after the urgency fades… when everything goes quiet.

• Not resolved.

• Not answered.

• Just quiet.

The kind of quiet that feels less like peace and more like absence. In the beginning, we couldn’t wait. Everything in us leaned forward… toward change, clarity, and movement. The tension felt like something to solve. Something to accelerate for the sake of the Gospel, or at least what we believed the Gospel required of us. But then nothing moved. Or at least, nothing we could measure. And this is where the spiritual life becomes more than intention. We assume waiting is what happens when nothing is going on. But in the way God works, waiting is rarely empty. It is often where the deepest work of formation takes place.

Waiting Is Not a Gap

We’ve been formed… culturally and religiously… to treat waiting like a gap between meaningful moments.

• Between call and confirmation.

• Between discernment and deployment.

• Between prayer and response.

So we fill the space. We strategize. We spiritualize our urgency. We try to force movement in the name of faithfulness. But waiting is not empty. Waiting is a place. A place where God does slow, often hidden work… work that resists our plan but not our transformation.

• Not quickly.

• Not efficiently.

• Not on demand.

The Subtle Danger of Urgency

Urgency can sound like faith. It can sound like conviction… like obedience. Like responsiveness to the Spirit. But urgency can also be something else. It can be anxiety with theological language. Not everything that feels urgent is obedience. And not everything that is slow is disobedience. We are not saved by our responsiveness to God’s timeline. We are formed by our surrender to it. What we call delay is often mercy… or preparation…. or refinement that cannot be rushed without distorting the very vocation we are trying to live into.

The Pattern We Keep Missing

Scripture does not hide this pattern… it repeats it. Israel in the wilderness, learning dependence before promise. The long silence between prophets, where God is no less present for being unheard. Jesus himself, thirty hidden years before three years of public ministry. We tend to read these as prelude. But they are not prelude. They are formation. God is not in a hurry to produce what only time… and surrender… can faithfully sustain. Delay is not divine absence. It is often the means by which God prepares us to bear the weight of what we’ve been called to carry.

What Waiting Reveals

When the outward movement slows, the inward life becomes harder to ignore. Our fear and control surfaces. The quiet suspicion that maybe we’ve missed God altogether. Waiting confronts the illusion that we are managing outcomes in partnership with God. It reveals how much of our discipleship has been subtly shaped by productivity rather than presence. And in that revealing, there is invitation.

The Work Beneath the Work

Waiting is not passive. It is the work of remaining in Christ when there is no immediate evidence that anything is changing.

It is the work of:

• Staying when you would rather escape.

• Listening when God seems silent.

• Releasing timelines you have confused with calling.

It is the work of being conformed… not to your expectations… but to Christ… not more efficient… more faithful.

Maybe We’re Not the Ones Waiting

We say we are waiting on God.

• Waiting for clarity.

• For provision.

• For direction.

But Scripture suggests something more unsettling. God is patient…not slow, but patient. And that patience is not for God’s sake. It is for ours. What if God is waiting… not to act, but for us to become? To become the kind of people who can receive without grasping. Who can lead without controlling. Who can carry calling without confusing it for identity. Because some things cannot be entrusted to us until they no longer define us.

When Nothing Changes (But You Do)

There is a quieter transformation that takes place in waiting. Not dramatic. Not visible. But deeply real. Your reactions begin to shift. Your need to control loosens. Your identity becomes less tethered to outcomes and more rooted in Christ. The external circumstances may remain unchanged. But you are not unchanged. And that is not incidental to the work. It is the work. Because when movement comes… and it will… it will require a self that has been crucified, not just activated.

Stay

There is a kind of faith that moves. And there is a kind of faith that remains. That resists the urge to manufacture momentum. That trusts that God is at work…even when that work is hidden.

If nothing seems to be moving… you are not behind. You are not abandoned. You are not outside the will of God. You are being formed. So stay. Remain in Christ. Attend to what is being shaped in you. Let patience have its full work. Even here. Especially here.

There’s a moment in Exodus 32 that feels uncomfortably familiar. Moses has gone up the mountain. He’s been gone a long time. Long enough for the people to begin asking questions they can’t answer:

• Where is he?

• What is God doing?

• Have we been left on our own?

And in that space…between promise and fulfillment, between presence and absence…they do what many of us do. They make something. A golden calf. It’sVisible. It’s Immediate. It’s Controllable.

It’s easy to read that story and shake our heads, but the deeper truth is this, the calf isn’t just about false belief but about unresolved anxiety. They don’t stop believing in God. They just can’t tolerate the waiting.

Then you turn to Gospel of Matthew 5, and you hear the words of the Beatitudes:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit…

• Blessed are those who mourn…

• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…

These are not people who have things figured out. They are people who are living in the very space Exodus 32 tries to escape. They are still waiting. Still longing. Still not in control. And Jesus calls them blessed. That’s the tension.

In Exodus, the people cannot bear the absence of clarity, so they fill it. In Matthew, Jesus names those who can remain in that space …and calls them alive in a deeper way.

There’s a quiet question running underneath both readings. What do you do when God feels absent, slow, or unclear? Do you reach for something—anything—to steady yourself? Do you construct meaning, certainty, or control just to quiet the discomfort?

Or…

Do you stay?

Staying doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means resisting the urge to resolve what isn’t ready to be resolved. It means allowing longing to remain longing…without immediately converting it into action. It means trusting that not all absence is abandonment.

The golden calf offers relief…but only for a moment. The Beatitudes offer something harder… a way of being that doesn’t depend on immediate resolution.

Most of us don’t build literal idols. But we do build timelines and expectations. We build narratives about how things should unfold.

And when those don’t materialize, the temptation is the same. Create something we can hold onto instead. But what if blessedness isn’t found in finally getting clarity What if it’s found in learning how to live without it?

This week, you might not need to fix anything. You might just need to notice where you’re trying to force an outcome… and gently loosen your grip. Not everything unfinished is broken. Not everything unclear needs to be resolved. Some things are still becoming. And sometimes, faith looks less like building something new… and more like staying present long enough for God to meet you there.

There’s a quiet gravity that comes with vestry service. It’s not always obvious at first. On paper, it can look like governance, decision-making, fiduciary responsibility—important, yes, but ultimately procedural. But over time, something deeper reveals itself. Vestry is not just about guiding a parish. It’s about being formed as leaders in the way of Jesus.

Reading “Servant for All: Status, Ambition, and the Way of Jesus” pressed into that reality for me in a different way. Craig Hill’s central idea is both simple and unsettling: much of what we assume about leadership—status, recognition, upward movement—sits uneasily alongside the way of Jesus. The disciples themselves wrestled with this tension. Again and again, they reached for significance as the world defines it, and again and again, Jesus redirected them toward something altogether different.

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

We’ve heard that before. But vestry life gives us a very real context in which that teaching either becomes embodied… or quietly ignored.

The Subtle Pull of Status

Vestries, like any leadership body, are not immune to the gravitational pull of status and influence. It can show up in small ways:

• Whose voice carries the most weight in the room

• How decisions are shaped before they’re formally discussed

• The unspoken hierarchy between clergy and lay leaders

• The quiet desire to be seen as effective, insightful, or “right”

None of this is usually malicious. In fact, it often comes from a sincere desire to serve well. But Hill’s work surfaces an uncomfortable truth: ambition has a way of disguising itself as faithfulness. And that’s where the invitation of Jesus becomes particularly challenging.

Leadership as Self-Emptying

What if vestry leadership is less about asserting influence and more about relinquishing it? Not in the sense of passivity or disengagement—but in the deeper sense of kenosis, self-emptying. The kind of leadership that is willing to:

• Listen before speaking

• Defer rather than dominate

• Create space rather than fill it

• Seek the good of the whole over personal preference

This doesn’t make decision-making easier. If anything, it makes it more demanding. Because it requires a different kind of attentiveness—not just to outcomes, but to posture. Hill’s framing suggests that the question is not simply, *“What decision should we make?”* but also, *“Who are we becoming as we make it?”*

The Formation Happening in the Room

One of the most overlooked aspects of vestry work is that formation is always happening. Every agenda, every discussion, every moment of tension is shaping something:

• How we understand authority

• How we relate to one another

• What we believe about power and responsibility

In that sense, vestry is not just a governing body—it’s a formative community. And that raises the stakes. Because if we’re not intentional, we will default to the patterns we’ve inherited from the surrounding culture. Efficiency over discernment. Persuasion over listening. Control over trust. But if Hill is right, the way of Jesus invites something else entirely—a reordering of leadership around service, humility, and a willingness to move “downward” rather than upward.

A Different Measure of Faithfulness

So what does faithfulness look like for a vestry? It may not always look like clear wins or unanimous decisions. It may not feel particularly efficient. It may even feel, at times, like we’re moving slower than we’d like. But perhaps faithfulness looks more like:

• A room where every voice is genuinely heard

• A willingness to sit with complexity rather than rush resolution

• Decisions that emerge from prayerful discernment rather than quiet power dynamics

• Leaders who are less concerned with being right and more concerned with being formed

In other words, a community that is learning—imperfectly, but intentionally—to become “servant for all.”

The Ongoing Work

If I’m honest, this is not a comfortable shift. There’s something in me that still wants clarity, efficiency, and a sense of control. There’s a part of me that would prefer leadership to feel more straightforward, more measurable. But the way of Jesus rarely conforms to those expectations. And perhaps that’s the point.

Vestry service, at its best, is not just about leading a parish well. It’s about being drawn, together, into a different kind of life—a life where status is relativized, ambition is reoriented, and service becomes the defining mark of leadership. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But steadily, over time. And maybe that’s where the real work begins.

There’s something about the weekend that invites a different kind of attention.

The pace softens. The noise quiets—at least a little. And what we may have rushed past during the week has a chance to rise back to the surface.

This space is an attempt to honor that.

Each weekend, I’ll gather a few pieces—reflections on faith, vocation, and the strange, holy work of being human in the midst of it all. Some are drawn from Scripture, some from lived experience, and some from that in-between place where the two meet and illuminate one another.

Think of this less as a collection to get through and more as an invitation to sit with. To notice what lingers. To pay attention to what stirs.

So wherever you find yourself this weekend—rested or weary, clear-headed or carrying questions—you’re welcome here.

Let’s see what holds our attention together.

The Infinite Becomes Finite so that the Finite Might Touch the Infinite | A sermon delivered at Grace Episcopal | Sheboygan, Wisconsin on December 28, 2025.

Why Vestries Feel Stuck (and What to Do About It) | Part 1 on Vestries | Discernment, stewardship, and the deeper purpose of vestry leadership

When Nothing Feels Finished | Finding peace when your life doesn’t feel complete.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

This is a follow up to my sermon notes: When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.”

There’s a quiet tension many of us live with:

We hear Jesus say, “It is finished,” but much of our lives feel anything but.

The grief still lingers. The situation is unresolved. The relationship is strained or broken. The questions remain unanswered.

And so we’re left holding two realities at once:

a declaration of completion… and a lived experience of incompleteness.

So what are we supposed to do with that?

The Space Between Finished and Unfinished

“It is finished” is not a statement about everything in our lives being wrapped up neatly. It is a statement about God’s work being complete. Something decisive has happened in the life, death, and self-offering of Christ. Something that does not depend on whether your circumstances feel resolved today. And yet—our lives are still unfolding.

We still live in the “in-between”:

• between promise and fulfillment,

• between healing begun and healing completed,

• between cross and resurrection as lived experience.

Which means much of our spiritual life is lived in a kind of tension:

Trusting what is finished… while living in what is not.

We Don’t Rush the Process

One of the temptations—especially in faith—is to try to rush resolution. To skip ahead. To make meaning too quickly. To declare something “redeemed” before we’ve actually lived through it.

But the pattern we see in Christ is different. There is Good Friday. There is silence. There is waiting. Even Jesus’ own journey includes time where nothing looks resolved.

Which suggests something important:

Not everything unfinished is a problem to fix.

Some things are a reality to be lived faithfully within.

What Faith Looks Like in the Middle

If we take these readings seriously, faith is not about having everything tied together. It is about remaining. Remaining present. Remaining honest. Remaining open to God—even when clarity doesn’t come.

Psalm 22 doesn’t skip the anguish. It gives it language. Hebrews doesn’t deny suffering. It names it as part of the path. And the Gospel doesn’t avoid the cross. It walks straight through it. So perhaps faith, for us, looks less like certainty and more like staying in relationship with God in the midst of what is unresolved.

A Different Kind of Completion

What if “It is finished” doesn’t mean your life will feel complete…but that you are held within something that is? That your unfinished story is already gathered into a larger, completed work of love? That even now—before things make sense, before things settle— you are not outside of God’s redemption? This doesn’t erase the tension. But it reframes it. You don’t have to force closure where there isn’t any. You don’t have to manufacture meaning on demand. You can simply live, honestly and faithfully, in the middle.

A Quiet Invitation

So here is the invitation—not to resolve, but to notice:

Where in your life does something remain unfinished?

And instead of trying to fix it or explain it away, what would it look like to place that very place within the words of Christ:

It is finished.

Not as a contradiction— but as a covering. Not as an answer—but as a deeper truth holding you, even here.

Because maybe the question is not:

“Why isn’t this finished yet?”

But:

“Can I trust that even this unfinished place is not outside the work God has already completed?”

And perhaps that is where peace begins— not in resolution, but in trust.

There is a question that echoes beneath all of these readings—a question we rarely ask out loud, but one we carry nonetheless:

What does God do with suffering?

Not in theory. Not in abstract thinking.
But real suffering—rejection, betrayal, injustice, silence, pain.

Because if we are honest, suffering often feels like absence.
Like distance.
Like being abandoned.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The cry of the psalmist is not polite. It is not restrained. It is raw. It is human. And it is a cry that has been prayed in hospital rooms, at gravesides, in moments of quiet despair, and in the hidden places of the heart.

And it is a cry that Jesus himself says.

But here is the mystery these readings invite us to:

God does not answer suffering by removing it.
God answers suffering by entering it.

Isaiah gives us the image—the suffering servant.
Despised. Rejected. Wounded. Crushed.

And yet—“he has borne our infirmities… by his bruises we are healed.”

This is not suffering for suffering’s sake.
This is suffering taken up into the very work of redemption.

The servant does not suffer instead of God’s presence—
the servant suffers as the very place where God’s presence is revealed.

And then we come to John’s Gospel reading.

There is something important about the way Jesus moves through these events.
He is not swept along by them. He is not overpowered by them.

He steps forward in the garden: “Whom are you looking for?”
He refuses violence when he says: “Put your sword back.”
He speaks truth before power.
He carries the cross.
He remains.

Again and again, we see not a victim—but one who chooses.

“Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

This is not resignation.
This is obedience.
This is love.

And Hebrews helps us name what is happening beneath the surface:

“He learned obedience through what he suffered… and became the source of eternal salvation.”

Not because suffering is good.
But because love is willing to go there.

All the way there.

Even to the cross.

Even into death.

And then, at the very end, Jesus speaks a single word:

“It is finished.”

Not, “I am finished.”
Not, “It is over.”

But: It is accomplished.

What is accomplished?

Everything that Isaiah foresaw.
Everything the psalm cried out in longing.
Everything Hebrews proclaims in hope.

Sin borne.
Brokenness carried.
Separation bridged.
Love poured out completely.

“It is finished.”

Which means that suffering—while still real, still painful, still present—
is no longer empty.

It has been entered.
It has been held.
It has been redeemed.

And so the cross stands at the center of our faith not as a symbol of despair and sadness,
but as the place where even the worst the world can do
is met by the unstoppable love of God.

A love that does not turn away.
A love that does not give up.
A love that goes all the way through.

So what does this mean for us?

It does not mean we should seek suffering.
It does not mean we pretend pain is good.

But it does mean this:

There is no place you can go—not even into your deepest sorrow—
where Christ has not already gone.

There is no wound you carry that is unknown to him.
No grief he does not hold.
No cry he does not echo.

And more than that—there is no suffering that is beyond redemption.

Because the cross tells us that even there—
especially there—
God is at work.

Quietly.
Faithfully.
Transforming what seems like an ending
into the beginning of something new.

So we come to the cross not with easy answers,
but with trust.

Trust that love is stronger than suffering.
Trust that God is present even in silence.
Trust that what feels unfinished in us
is already being gathered into God’s finished work.

“It is finished.”

And because it is—
nothing, not even suffering,
is wasted.

Amen.

There is a natural tendency to think that the real work of a vestry happens in the meeting. That is where the agenda is. Where decisions are made. Where motions are passed and next steps are assigned. And yet, over time, I have come to suspect that much of the most important work of a vestry happens somewhere else. It happens between the meetings.

What We Expect Discernment to Look Like

When vestries talk about discernment, it is often imagined as something that happens in a particular moment.

• A decision point.

• A structured conversation.

• A clear sense of direction emerging from discussion and prayer.

Sometimes it does happen that way. But more often, discernment is quieter than that. Less like a single moment, and more like a process that unfolds slowly over time.

The Reality of How Discernment Works

In practice, discernment tends to take shape in small, almost unnoticeable ways. A conversation after church that lingers a little longer than expected. A concern raised gently in passing. A growing sense that something is no longer working—or that something new may be needed. These moments rarely feel definitive. But they accumulate. And over time, they begin to form a kind of shared awareness. By the time something reaches the vestry agenda, it is often not entirely new. It is something that has already been taking shape beneath the surface.

The Role of Relationship

Because of this, discernment is not only about ideas.

• It is about people.

• Trust matters.

• Honesty matters.

The ability to speak openly… and to listen carefully… matters. A vestry that can speak truthfully with one another, even when there is disagreement, is far more capable of discernment than one that simply moves efficiently through an agenda. This kind of trust is not built in a single meeting. It is built over time, in the ordinary interactions that happen between them.

The Importance of Attention

The contemplative tradition often speaks about the discipline of paying attention. Discernment, in many ways, is an extension of that discipline. It requires noticing:

• where there is energy

• where there is resistance

• what concerns continue to surface

• what possibilities begin to emerge

None of these are always clear in the moment. But when a vestry learns to pay attention together, patterns begin to appear. And those patterns often point toward what needs to be addressed.

The Meeting as Confirmation, Not Beginning

When the work between meetings is happening well, something shifts in the meeting itself. Instead of trying to figure everything out in real time, the meeting becomes a place of:

• clarification

• confirmation

• shared understanding

Decisions still need to be made But they are no longer being formed from nothing. They are the result of a process that has already been unfolding. This changes the tone of the room. There is less urgency to force clarity. More space to recognize it when it appears.

The Quiet Influence of Preparation

This also means that leadership often happens in subtle ways.

• A conversation ahead of time.

• A question raised early.

• An effort to understand concerns before they surface publicly.

None of this is about controlling outcomes. It is about creating the conditions in which thoughtful, faithful decisions can emerge. The work is quiet, but it matters.

The Spiritual Dimension

At its deepest level, discernment is not simply about making good decisions.

• It is about listening.

• Listening for one another.

• Listening for the needs of the community.

• Listening, in whatever way we are able, for the movement of God.

That kind of listening cannot be confined to a meeting. It requires a posture that extends into the rest of life.

A Different Way of Seeing the Work

When we begin to see vestry leadership this way, the work itself starts to look different. The meeting is still important, but it is no longer the center of everything. The center becomes the ongoing, often unseen work of:

• building trust

• paying attention

• remaining open

• allowing clarity to emerge over time

This is slower work than simply moving through an agenda, but it is also deeper.

A Closing Thought

It is easy to measure what happens in a meeting. Agendas are completed. Decisions are recorded. Actions are assigned. The work between meetings is harder to measure. It unfolds in conversations, relationships, and quiet moments of attention. And yet, it may be there—in those unseen spaces—that the most important work of a vestry is actually taking place. Discernment rarely arrives all at once. More often, it takes shape slowly, between one meeting and the next.

What Is a Vestry Actually For?

There is a moment that comes in many vestry meetings—sometimes quietly, sometimes with a bit of frustration—when the question surfaces:

What are we actually supposed to be doing?

I’ve seen it happen in different ways. The agenda has been full. Reports have been given. Finances reviewed. Building issues discussed. Decisions made. And yet, when the meeting ends, there can be a subtle sense that something is missing. Not wrong, exactly. But incomplete.

Most vestry members care deeply about their parish. They show up. They give their time. They carry real responsibility. And still, it’s not uncommon for vestries to feel like they are moving from one issue to the next without a clear sense of purpose.

In my experience, this is not a lack of commitment.It’s a lack of clarity.

The Tension We Don’t Always Name

Part of the challenge is that vestries are asked to hold together two things that don’t always fit neatly. On one hand, there are very concrete responsibilities:

• finances

• property

• legal and fiduciary oversight

These are real, necessary, and often urgent.

On the other hand, there is something less tangible, but just as important:

• discernment

• spiritual leadership

• attention to the mission and future of the parish

When those two dimensions aren’t clearly connected, vestry life can slowly drift toward what feels most immediate.

• Budgets demand attention because they have to.

• Buildings demand attention because something is always breaking.

• Problems demand attention because they can’t be ignored.

And over time, it can begin to feel like the vestry exists primarily to manage resources and respond to issues.

But that’s not quite it.

The Deeper Work

At its heart, a vestry is not simply a management team. It is a group of people entrusted with the long-term health—spiritual and institutional—of a parish. That includes finances and buildings, yes. But those things are not ends in themselves. They are part of something larger. The real work of a vestry is to keep asking:

• Who are we called to be?

• What is God inviting this community into?

• How do we steward what we’ve been given in service of that calling?

Without those questions, vestry work becomes maintenance. With them, it becomes leadership.

Why This Is Hard

Most vestry members are not trained for this kind of role. They come because they care about their church and are willing to serve. But the expectations of the role are often unclear. Some assume the vestry should be involved in everything. Others assume it should stay at a high level. Some look to the rector to lead everything. Others expect the vestry to set direction. All of that can exist in the same room at the same time. And when expectations aren’t shared, even a healthy vestry can begin to feel uncertain. That uncertainty usually leads in one of two directions:

Either the vestry gets pulled into the day-to-day details of church life, or it steps back too far and struggles to know when to act.

Neither one feels quite right.

Reclaiming the Role

Clarity begins by naming what a vestry is—and what it is not. A vestry is not:

• a place to process every concern in the parish

• a group responsible for solving every immediate problem

• a collection of individual opinions

A vestry is:

• a body that stewards resources for the sake of mission

• a partner in discernment with the rector

• a group that holds the long view of the parish’s life

That shift may seem small, but it changes how everything else is approached.

From Reaction to Discernment

Without clarity, vestry meetings tend to become reactive. With clarity, something different becomes possible. There begins to be space for:

• prayer

• reflection

• deeper questions

Not instead of the work—but alongside it.

Sometimes it’s as simple as:

• beginning with a moment of silence

• asking how a decision connects to the parish’s mission

• allowing space to pause rather than rushing to resolution

These are small practices, but they begin to reshape the culture of the meeting.

Holding the Bigger Frame

There will always be urgent matters. A roof will need repair. A budget will need balancing. A difficult conversation will need to happen. The goal is not to avoid these things. It is to hold them within a larger frame. To remember:

The vestry exists not just to keep the church running, but to help it remain faithful.

That requires intention. It requires returning, again and again, to the deeper purpose of the work.

Seeing the Work Differently

Over time, if that clarity takes root, something begins to shift. Budgets start to look less like numbers and more like expressions of priority. Buildings become less about maintenance and more about ministry. Decisions become less about getting through the agenda and more about discerning the way forward. The work itself may not change dramatically. But the way it is held does.

Final Thoughts

The question *“What is a vestry actually for?”* may never be answered once and for all. But it can be held in a different way. A vestry is a group of people entrusted with helping a community remain faithful— not only in how it manages its resources, but in how it listens for where God is leading. That work is rarely dramatic. It often unfolds slowly, in ordinary meetings and quiet decisions. But when it is approached with clarity, patience, and prayer, it becomes something more than administration. It becomes a shared vocation.

Does my ordinary work matter spiritually?

Most days begin the same way. I go to my office (I work remotely most days), open my laptop, glance at the calendar, and begin moving through the small responsibilities that make up the day. Emails to answer. Meetings to prepare for. Questions to respond to. Documents to review. By mid-morning I am often moving quickly from one task to the next. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, a quiet question sometimes comes up:

Does any of this matter spiritually?

For many people, the spiritual life is associated with certain kinds of moments—prayer, worship, silence, retreat, or service to others. These are the places where we expect to encounter God. But most of our lives are not spent in those moments. Most of our hours are spent in offices, homes, meetings, and other responsibilities. We answer questions, solve problems, manage schedules, care for people, and carry out tasks that often feel routine. Because of this, many people quietly assume there is a divide between the “spiritual life” and the rest of life. Spirituality belongs to prayer and worship, while ordinary work belongs to the practical world of responsibilities and obligations.

But the Christian story challenges that. At the center of the Christian faith is the belief that God entered the ordinary world. The Incarnation does not take place in a church or a place of prestige, but in the middle of ordinary human life. Work, relationships, meals, conversations, and daily responsibilities all become part of the landscape where God is present. If that is true, then the ordinary cannot be spiritually empty. In fact, it may be precisely where much of the spiritual life unfolds. Consider what actually fills our days. Most of our time is spent doing things that seem simple on the surface: responding to others, making decisions, completing tasks, showing up to responsibilities that require patience and care. Yet within these ordinary moments something deeper is happening:

• Integrity is practiced when we choose honesty over convenience.

• Patience is practiced when we slow down enough to truly listen.

• Kindness is practiced in the tone of a conversation or the generosity of a response.

These small decisions shape the kind of people we are becoming. The spiritual life is not only about moments of prayer or reflection. It is also about the quiet formation that takes place through the habits and choices that fill our ordinary days. Sometimes this becomes most noticeable in the spaces between tasks. There is a moment before a meeting begins when everyone is still settling in. A brief pause after finishing one responsibility and before beginning another. A breath taken before responding to a difficult email. These moments often pass unnoticed. But they can also become small openings—opportunities to return to attention, to remember that our work is not disconnected from the deeper movement of our lives.

The contemplative tradition often speaks about the discipline of paying attention. God is not encountered only by withdrawing from the world, but by learning to see more clearly within it. When we begin to pay attention, ordinary work starts to look different. A meeting is no longer just a meeting; it is a place where listening matters. A decision is not simply a task to complete but an opportunity to exercise empathy and care. A conversation becomes a chance to offer patience, encouragement, or understanding. None of these things are dramatic. They rarely feel extraordinary. But they are deeply human, and therefore deeply spiritual.

Our work, whatever form it takes, participates in something larger than the individual tasks themselves. Through our efforts communities are supported, families are sustained, organizations function, and the lives of others are affected in ways we may never fully see. The spiritual significance of work is not determined by its visibility or prestige. It is revealed in the faithfulness with which we carry it out. Ordinary responsibilities become meaningful when they are approached with attention, care, and integrity. This does not mean every task will feel sacred. Some days will still feel routine, even tedious. But over time we may begin to notice that the spiritual life is not confined to a few special moments. It unfolds quietly in the steady rhythm of daily responsibilities. Between one task and the next.

Perhaps the question is not simply whether our work matters spiritually. Perhaps the deeper question is to learn how to recognize the presence of God within the work we are already doing. Not only in moments of prayer or worship, but in the patience required to finish a difficult task, the attentiveness offered in a conversation, or the quiet care with which we carry out the responsibilities entrusted to us.

Most of life is lived between one task and the next.

And it may be precisely there, in those small spaces of ordinary faithfulness, that we begin to notice God most clearly.

This space is something of a crossroads.

Here you’ll find reflections from my life as a Diocesan Administrator, a postulant for the diaconate, a doctoral student, and a fellow pilgrim trying to walk faithfully through the ordinary rhythms of life. Some posts will explore theology and vocation. Others may wander into the territory of contemplation, yoga, meditation, or the small moments where faith intersects with everyday life.

If there is a single thread running through this publication, it is this:
the search for God in the ordinary.

Much of the spiritual life does not unfold in dramatic moments. It happens in meetings and quiet prayers, in the spaces between responsibilities, in the discipline of showing up—again and again—to listen for the still, small voice.

My hope is that this Substack becomes a place for thoughtful reflection rather than quick answers. A place where questions are welcome. A place where faith, doubt, contemplation, and curiosity can sit at the same table.

From time to time I’ll share:

• Reflections on Christian spirituality and vocation

• Thoughts from life in the church and diocesan ministry

• Insights from contemplative practices like meditation and yoga

• Occasional essays on theology, leadership, and the spiritual life

Above all, I hope these writings encourage a deeper awareness of God’s presence in the world around us.

Thank you for reading, for thinking, and for walking this path with me.

Grace and peace,
Michael

In the Gospel reading this morning, we see Jesus interacting with a Samaritan woman. The woman arrives at noon. Now this is very unusual as most would come to draw water in the morning or evening when the temperatures are cooler. It was also a time of socializing and sharing. The woman coming alone suggests she is socially isolated, avoiding others, or maybe carrying some shame. She is living out her “water jar” of burdens. But there she encounters Jesus. What an unusual place to rest from a journey for Jesus, as it likely was not the most shaded place and there would be far better places to rest. 

Jesus asks her for a drink of water. We see the response, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” We need to understand some context here. This is unusual for so many reasons. The Jews and the Samaritans have a long tense history. It began with the Assyrian conquest in 722BC of northern Israel. After this, the northern Israelites began to marry and have children with the Assyrians. The southern Israelites viewed this as unclean and thus the Samaritans were considered false Jews. The Samaritans rejected the Temple in Jerusalem and in fact had their own Temple at Mount Gerizim. The tension escalated to a point in 128BC with southern Israel destroying the Mount Gerizim temple. The relationship to say the least was very tense. So for Jesus (a Jew) to be talking to a Samaritan woman was very unusual. 

But Jesus replies in verse 10, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman responds, “Where do you get that living water? ” The woman is very confused since Jesus has no bucket and the well is deep. But Jesus wasn’t talking about water you drink. He was referring to the Holy Spirit and the gift of eternal “water”.

Here is where things begin to get interesting. She asks for the “water” that Jesus offers. He asks her to go and get her husband. But she replies she has no husband. Jesus is wanting her to acknowledge her burdens, before explaining that he already knows. God knows every aspect of us and already knows our sins and burdens. He is just wanting us to confess them and acknowledge them. It is when this occurs that the Samaritan woman begins to see who Jesus really is. However, Jesus doesn’t just end there.

He goes on to explain that a time will come, when people are no longer tied to a specific location or group, but that all people will be able to worship God in spirit and truth. Her eyes are opened to who Jesus really is. She races back to the village to tell the others. But what does she not take back with her? Her water jar… her burdens. She leaves it with Jesus. Her burden becomes much lighter. 

Like the Samaritan woman, we all have our “water jars”, the sins and burdens we carry with us in the isolation of the noon day where others can’t see. We are ashamed of them. We are drinking the water that makes us thirsty again. We keep trying to find that “one thing” that makes us whole. Chasing this and that, hoping for something that makes us complete. But God already knows about our burdens. He’s fully aware of them and yet… still loves us as we are and wants us to drink the water of eternal life. He wants us to set them down and worship Him in spirit and truth. Think about your own burdens right now. Are they painful to bear? Are they overwhelming and a struggle to carry? God already knows about them and yet, fully loves you more than you can imagine. Thats the message of the Gospel and Lent. A God that loves us so much that He accepts us where we are at now. With all of our baggage, burdens, and shortcomings.  But He doesn’t want to leave us “where we are”. He wants to fill us with the Holy Spirit and give us “true” wholeness. As the collect this morning begins, “Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves….”

This morning as we approach the altar for the Eucharist, bring those “water jars’ with you and place them on the altar. God is already fully aware. There’s nothing we can hide. He just wants you to set them down and follow Him. Accept His living water and never thirst again. Do it today and finally feel the load lifted. 

I have a daily meditation practice. I have been doing it for a few years now, but I remember when I first started. My thoughts would race everywhere, what I need to do for work, at home, you get the idea. It seemed impossible to sit there and keep the mind from going from one thought to the other. Then one day… while I was sitting there… everything suddenly became peaceful. No racing thoughts, no mind wandering off… complete peacefulness. Then quietly a voice began to enter my thoughts… you are doing it! You are doing it! Woohoo! Ugh… the silence broke.

The key with meditation though is not how long you sit in practice. Its how it begins to seep into your daily life. You suddenly find that the driver that cut you off doesn’t irritate you. That coworker that you find frustrating doesn’t frustrate you anymore. The world view begins to change. I call it moving from meditation to being meditated. A visible change in our world view occurs.

In the readings today, we see that God’s intervention (The Incarnation) creates a visible change in the believer. In the Collect this morning we prayed that the “new light” poured upon us might “shine forth in our lives.” The Gospel reading refers to it as “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” A way to summarize this morning’s Gospel is “The Infinite becomes finite so that the finite might touch the Infinite.” (On a side note: I find it interesting that we celebrate the birth of Christ around the time when we are making a turn seasonally from the long nights of darkness to longer days of light.Possibly a lesson there from Nature.)

This pouring of a new light though isn’t something just theological or philosophical. It is literally a physical, mental, and spiritual change in each of us. Isaiah describes it as:

…my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

It’s a complete makeover. A complete change that you feel and others begin to see. But its not just a lamp that God lights to look at; He lights it so others can see by it. Think about this for a minute. The light that God has placed in you is not just for your benefit. It’s so that light may guide others to God. How powerful is that? How does that change your personal view of God’s light in you?

But I am a person (like some of you) that likes something more tangible. This is all great but what do I do with this? Paul talks about what to do in his letter to the Galatians. He says we are no longer imprisoned by the law (Galatians 3:23). We are freed and no longer need to live under a legalist system of do’s and don’ts. Too often though we find ourselves falling back into such living. It can be so much easier to put everything in a nice neat box of just following the rules. Christ calls us, though, to focus on Him and model his life. To experience the freedom of living that He fulfills. Not to be burdened by the heavy yoke of the law and sin. We sometimes put so much pressure on ourselves to try to live a life that is unattainable and unrealistic. Christ’s calling is simply to follow Him and nothing more. He accepts us where we are at here and now with all the baggage that we bring.

Jesus challenges us, though, to shift our view from the inward such our personal struggles and shortcomings. Shift it outward to your fellow believers, to the community we serve, and to the world at large. Like Jesus, take a humble servant’s heart. We get up every morning, and the first question that should be in our minds and hearts, is “how can I be a servant to others today”? Jesus was the Incarnate of God! By all rights He should have lived His time on earth as a king. But, you see that is the key, He didn’t do that. Instead, He lived His life here as a humble servant.

Let’s do a little exercise. Look at all the thoughts that are going through your head right now. No matter what they are. The people, the activities, all of them….Now ask yourself, how do they change if I approach them with a humble servant’s heart. Do they differ? Do they take on a different dynamic? The view can’t help but change when we approach things from the humble servant’s heart of Christ. Now let’s take this a step further. Think of all those people in your life (esp. The one’s you find…. Well… we will say challenging.) Now think about them from the view of a humble servant. How do things change? How can you bring this into your personal life?

I challenge you to do two things this week:

1. Enkindle: Through prayer and the Word, stoke the fire of the Spirit within.

2. Reflect: Look for the “dark corners” of your personal life (the past view of yourself that you are still carrying with you) and community (loneliness, injustice, grief) and carry the light there.

In closing, if no one has ever told you this, let me be the first. You are no longer defined by your past, your shadow, or your “slavery.” You are a “crown of beauty” in the hand of the Lord.Let that sink in for a minute (repeat it). Like Christ, live your life of beauty as a humble servant to others and share the light of God with them.

As Paul said in his letter to the Galatians:

“And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”7So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

Go forth and live your life as a child and heir of God.

AMEN