Here I am, Lord. Send me.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything more than a “Mommy blog” type of post that’s just documenting our life. I’ve said before but this blog is essentially a baby book for my kids. At the end of each year, I print it out and have a hard copy of all of the posts and pictures from the past 365 days.

But being at home the last 4 months has given me a lot of time to think, and reflect, and one thing that I’ve thought long and hard about is how things may be different when we go back to “normal”, specifically as it relates to ministry.

Let me back up just a bit and say that in the past 7 months or so (maybe a bit longer), I’ve coordinate the children’s ministry at our church. The coordination essentially entails me recruiting volunteers, scheduling volunteers, and managing the schedules of the various classes. This isn’t the first time I’ve coordinate children’s ministry at church and over the past 10+ years I’ve noticed a recurring trend – it is REALLY hard to get people to commit to serve.

I am constantly trying to fill a slot and I’m continually asking people week after week if they will commit to just one hour, one Sunday a month. It doesn’t sound like much, right? And yet, I’m always searching for more volunteers and I have heard so many excuses. One excuse, however, has been heard exponentially more than any of the others:

I just don’t have the time right now.

And yet, here we are, in the middle of a pandemic and we’re all doing so many things that we didn’t think we had the time for (and to be honest, they are things that we still don’t have the time for).

I used to say that there was NO WAY that I could home school my kids. But guess what? I spent the last 2 months of the school year doing just that, and it looks like the next school year may start out that way too. Shockingly, they are totally fine! Somehow many of us have found ourselves working full time jobs from home, home schooling our kids, and supervising toddlers all at the same time. It’s not easy – but we are doing it! We are finding time for 30 extra things. We do it because we have to, but in the process we are finding out that we are capable of so much more than we thought.

Maybe we should really reconsider our response when we tell God that we don’t have time.

How lame does our excuse sound now when we say that we don’t have time for 1 hour a month to volunteer in a first grade Sunday School class, when we’ve just spent the last few months teaching reading, writing and arithmetic to potentially multiple grade levels?

When we come out of this virus on the other side, it’s my prayer that we all remember the things that we were able to do that we never thought possible. And that we will stop giving God excuses for the things that we don’t feel capable of doing or the things that we don’t think we have time for.

Let’s be a little more like Isaiah.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: 
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” 

And I said: 
“Here am I. Send me!”

Isaiah 6:8

So the next time that you’re asked to volunteer in a children’s class, or the next time you’re given the opportunity to go on a mission trip, or the next time a ministry event needs volunteers, or the next time the worship pastor is trying to find additional media volunteers, don’t just discount the service opportunity because you feel unprepared or “too busy”. Maybe this is your Isaiah moment to say: Here I am, Lord. Send me!

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