And yet...

God, my Savior, my High Priest, I am in desperate need of atonement. I am continually in need of your mercy and your grace and your atonement. Each week you give me another opportunity to speak to your people. To shepherd. To pastor. I have no idea why! Nothing about me is worthy of filling any of these roles. Most of the time I wonder whether I really am qualified to do what you have allowed me to do.

Undeserving; that is a given.
Unqualified; that I am learning all the time with each opportunity you give me.

Your grace and mercy abounds in so many ways in my life; one of which is the fact you continue to open doors to speak to and care for your people. When I am so desperately in need of your grace, your atonement, your forgiveness. I need a high priest who not only knows my sin and struggle but who is also capable of canceling and forgetting it all so I can actually come closer to you. Daily I am reminded of just how depraved I really am.

Nothing about me makes me any better than anyone else. In fact, anything about me, the worst of sinners, makes me incredibly worse than anyone else.

And yet...

Those two words could sum up so much of my life.

And yet...

There are so many things, if left to myself, make me so much worse than anyone else, AND YET you forgive, forget, make clean, and use me to love your people; your church. I cannot believe it. I scarce can take it in.

Woe is me, a man unclean!

And yet...all this...

I can only respond in gratitude, because there is nothing else I could offer to repay you for all my "and yet..."

Thank you for your love, your mercy, your grace.
Thank you for the atonement.
Thank you for being bigger than me and being willing to use me with my inadequacies and undeserved "and yet..."

- St. PC of the Undeserving

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LISTENING TO: "100 Days, 100 Nights" by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings