February 10th, 2026

Hi Friends,

“I had just assumed that the energy would keep coming. Why wouldn’t it? Isn’t that what pastors are supposed to do? Stoke the fires? Prime the pump? Charge the batteries? Do the ‘American’ thing? After only three years was I already a failed pastor?” … But now he was trudging through miserable, monotonous conditions, with no relief in sight, with no goal he could identify to press toward. Submitting to the life he had been given didn’t come easily. (A Burning In My Bones; Winn Collier)

Dissatisfaction is one of the driving forces of our culture. It is used to sell pretty much everything (“If you only possessed this _____, your life would be better.”) News outlets grab you by telling you something that will dissatisfy you or upset your perception of truth or reality. Worse yet, we have been sold — and many of us have believed — the lie that we can only be happy if we are noticed. To be fulfilled, we must experience Andy Warhol’s prophesied “15 minutes of fame.”

We’d rather have Mary Oliver’s “one wild and precious life” than this routine, boring one that comes with all these responsibilities, frustrations and pitfalls. To be fair, Oliver’s poem is about looking around and seeing the wonder in the mundane that you experience on a given day. And yet, even here, the implication is that some form of “wildness” or excitement is preferable to the “normal”, the “routine.” An so, we are dissatisfied.

This was Eugene Peterson’s experience just three years after becoming a pastor. It is the experience of anyone who settles down into some form of responsibility — a job, a marriage, parenthood, retirement. There are always “moments” but they are “moments” because they punctuate the monotonous and the routine and the perceived drudgery.

The answer to our dissatisfaction, our longing, is not more “moments,” stimulating as they might be. Rather, the answer is submission and acceptance of this life we have.

But how can we submit? Because God is here. Because he sees what I do in secret. Because my labour in the Lord in not in vain. My tears are caught in his bucket. I am loved absolutely and I don’t have to earn it. Almost nothing I do is beyond forgiveness. My weakness is actually a platform for God’s power. The apparent ashes of my life become a canvass for a God-painted beauty.

This submission doesn’t come easily (for Peterson, or me, or you) but it does come. You have to look to see God as he is and apply that reality to your life. Look at his word. Look at his world. Look at his people. But, most of all, look at Jesus!

Blessings!

Doug