Prepare Ye...

It occurred to me today, as I looked over my blog post from last night, that the Advent connection in my words might not have made sense to anyone but me. For those of you who didn't catch the link, which I admit was a bit fuzzy, I'll explain.

Advent is a season all about preparation. And most of the time, we think that preparation is about what we're doing, how we're preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ, how we're preparing for Christ's return. But I think it also gives us a chance to think about how God is preparing us.

John Wesley taught about the concept of prevenient grace, that is, the grace that God offers us before we even recognize God's existence. We usually talk about it in terms of salvation: prevenient grace is God reaching out to us in love, drawing us toward Godself continually until we recognize and respond to that action. But I believe that God's prevenient grace is always at work in our lives, shaping, preparing, and calling us in different ways. Most of the time, we don't recognize how God's prevenient grace has been at work until later. It's much easier to recognize what God has been up to in hindsight than it is to identify God's fingerprints in the moment.

I've been trolling my catalogue of experiences lately as part of my discernment, looking for the ways God may have been preparing me for the call I think I'm discerning. Now, don't panic, I'm not talking about a change of appointment soon. But I think everyone whose vocation is pastoral ministry (and probably all Christians, actually) should be trying to figure out how God is leading them. So, I'm working on that sort of discernment. And I believe that my feminism may be part of the way God has been preparing me to serve, not only where I am now, but in future ministry settings.

So this season, I'm not just trying to prepare myself, I'm also trying to pay attention to how God is and has been preparing me. That's what some of my pondering of faith and feminism has been about, and it will explain in advance if I start rambling about things that don't seem to relate to Advent. (Oh, and it also gives me free reign to blog about whatever I'm thinking, without worrying too much about connecting to this season. SCORE!)