The things that have driven me to my knees.
Like the balmy May evening I was ordained. Then I was forced to my knees by Presbyterian custom. Decked out in a black robe, I was sweating profusely as I knelt on the church’s carpet. About twenty elders surrounded me for the laying on of hands—the climax of the service. I typically do not kneel to pray; it hurts my knees, and my legs tend to cramp. The combined weight of all those hands was pressing me into the carpet and bending me over.
And the prayers! Long and sonorous. I needed air! I needed to stand up! I needed to run outside and tear off that infernal robe! That was altogether prophetic of what was to come in ministry in the years ahead.
I was on the verge of struggling to my feet when my senior pastor began to pray, “Lord, as Ben feels the weight of these hands … ” I was listening. He continued, ” … may he also feel the weight of the responsibility that is his.” I groaned and prepared again to get up. Then he prayed, “But may he also feel the strength of your everlasting arms holding him up.” I stayed on my knees, cramps and all, and murmured “Amen.”
Life is more interesting for those who come at the ministry from this posture. It’s like the little boy in the Chesterton parable who was granted a wish: he could be tiny or he could be a giant. The wish was granted, and at first being a giant was great fun. The Pacific was a wading pool. The Rockies were a dirt-bike course. Newark, New Jersey, could be squashed like a cigarette butt. But after a while life got boring. Everything was beneath him. There wasn’t much to do or anyone to do it with. It’s lonely being a giant.
Had he chosen to be tiny, his backyard would have been the Brazilian rain forest, the sand box the Sahara. He could have spent a lifetime exploring the attic. What fun he could have had with a sled and a half-gallon of ice cream! Life is more interesting for the small, the lowly.
It’s more interesting because there is room for God in it.
Bob Pierce, the wildly eccentric founder of World Vision, used to talk about what he called “God Room.” It was the gap between what he could humanly accomplish and what could happen only if God intervened. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Pierce knew there was a lot of God Room in his life.
The things that have driven me to my knees.
Thank you for them, Lord. Thank you for the family in my church, some years later, who lost all three of their children. The burden of ministry to them would have crushed me, had it not pushed us to our knees. Only little people can carry things like that. Thank you that when we’re weak we really are strong, that your strength is perfected in our weakness. Thank you that we are never taller than when we are on our knees.
It was hard to stay on my knees that evening in May, twenty five years ago. And hard ever since.
Last summer I went back to preach in the church I was ordained in. As I walked to the church that Sunday morning, my mind was awash in memories, most of them embarrassing. I said and did many things there I wish I hadn’t. But somehow God did some wonderful things both in and through me back then. Tears of gratitude and joy welled up in me. I said out loud to the Lord, “I was in over my head then, wasn’t I? You have been so faithful.”
I felt his smile with his rebuke as he answered, “So what makes you think you’re in your depth now?”
I’m still in over my head. The things that drive us to our knees.
Ben Patterson is dean of the chapel at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
