Think About It

The other day I was intrigued by an article in a national publication about how difficult the last few years have been on ministers. The headlines indicated that additional workloads, social unrest and the post-COVID world have made it harder to do what we do. Interestingly though, as I made my way through the article, the thing that tended to exacerbate the mental and emotional stress on many of these individuals were the personal choices they made. I will grant that there have been some challenging issues, but how much have we done to ourselves through the decisions we have made? While I can see this play out in modern ministry, we aren’t the only ones. Sure, there are times when things outside our control create hardships for us, but how much more often are the injuries self-inflicted? When we make poor choices, we might try to blame society or complain because things are stacked against us, but the truth of the matter is our suffering is often based on personal consequences.