Pastor's Progress
Gordon MacDonald
July 1, 1997
Gordon, you and Gail are going through one of the darkest moments you will ever face, and you have a choice: Will you deny the pain and run from it or will you embrace the pain and squeeze out of it everything God has for you?"
The man who spoke those words changed our lives.
His words echo the theology that often gets lost in the shadows of dark moments: God can play tricks on evil, if we let him, and pull from the darkness light and beauty.
Dark moments are not the exception, even in a life God blesses.
I would not have said that in my youth. I considered pain and suffering in the life of a Christian minister as gross anomalies or the result of sin.
But I've come to see the dark moments of life as precious moments, times to ask, "Is this a moment God can speak to me?"
As I look over my almost sixty years, I feel like the traveler in Pilgrim's Progress: I can spot dark moments in which I've seen God at work in my life in a clear way. In each I heard a message in the midst of pain. I offer you six:
1. Escape is never an answer
I quit my first job at 24.
I was a youth pastor on the south side of Denver and a senior at the University of Colorado. For the first fourteen months of my ministry, I was dearly loved. It seemed I could do no wrong. The senior pastor even offered me his pulpit on occasion, and everybody marveled that someone so young and without seminary training could preach so well.
Then for reasons I can't remember (or don't want to remember), things soured. I went from "He can do no wrong" to "He can do no right." The teenagers stopped showing up and began criticizing the youth program.
One afternoon, while walking through the church, I noticed a crumbled ball of paper on the floor. Instinctively, I bent down, ...
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