A Reluctant Retirement

Reflections on discerning the hand of God

Some have called it “discerning the hand of God.” That is kind of a formal statement, but you know what I mean – discovering what God has for us, what His calling is, where He is leading us.  There may be predictable times when we think about that in life, during so-called rites of passage or those moments we make the big decisions in life.  But the quest to discern what God has for us, where His “hand” is at work, can also be thrust on us suddenly, with no warning, unexpectedly, even painfully.

It was all of that and more when I faced the issue of my retirement.  Oh, I had been thinking about retirement off and on for years.  I knew I was getting older, that my energies and abilities would likely fade, and that an old preacher standing in front of a congregation week by week might just get, well, really old.  Through the years I watched my colleagues in ministry, fellow pastors, and I saw that some retired early and regretted it; others retired angry and couldn’t get over it; and still others retired fearfully, the future a black hole. Of course, there were those who retired joyfully, continuing ministry in new and fulfilling ways, entering some of the best years of their lives.  There were members in my congregation who were rather vocal, those who really liked me and told me they hoped I would never retire.  My fear was that there might be more who thought I should have retired long ago.

Though I had given thought and prayer to retiring at the end of 2020, the pandemic changed everything.  Churches were forced into choices they had not faced in our lifetime, experiencing a frightening isolation that shook the church (and our lives) to their foundations. I suddenly seemed to experience a renewed call to the church I was pastoring.  My dearly loved congregation needed me, a steady and predictable hand (that’s what I told myself) to lead them through turbulent waters.  Even so, by the end of 2020 I began to suspect this could go on for a long time, and so I began confiding to a few leaders that I would likely retire in 2021, perhaps in June or by the end of the year, but I also stressed I would give a six month notice to assist the congregation in the transition to a new pastor.

Those were my thoughts and plans which, as many of you know, went drastically wrong. 

Ironically, after preaching a sermon in January 2021 dealing with desperation and prayer entitled “At Wit’s End,” COVID struck my life and severely damaged my health.  Seventy-three days in the hospital were followed by months of rehab, and a desperate yearning rose within me, a longing to get back to pastoring.  Was it a renewed call from God, or just a distressed attempt to reclaim my former life?  Whatever it was, I tried – that is the best I can say it, I tried to return, but everything was different.  Oh, yes, I could still preach.  Forty-five years of preaching experience kicked in, and I had loads of resources to help me, but my body and mind would not cooperate.  Prior to COVID I would preach every Sunday, lead two Bible studies and a Sunday School class each week, and teach a college class in an area university as well.  After my return to the pulpit months after getting out of the hospital, it took all week just to prepare a single sermon.  Fatigue and fuzziness were my constant companions, and my mind could not keep all the plates spinning like it had before.  On top of that, my doctors and family were extremely cautious, trying to protect me from a second bout of the virus that would send me to the grave.  As 2021 moved to the final months of the year, it became exceedingly obvious that I needed to retire, for myself and for the good of my beloved church family.  Five weeks’ notice was the best I could give.

Sensing that God was releasing me from my call to the church, I entered a reluctant retirement, uncertain and more than a bit uneasy about what would come next.

You may wonder where God was in all of this?  How was His hand discerned?  It is a great question.  I can see things much more clearly now at the time of this writing.  Looking back two years I realize that I felt buffeted from one thing to another.  Decisions were simply forced on me.  The crushing recognition that I still had much needed recovery time ahead became evident.  My doctors were very much up front with me, both in their amazement over the tremendous progress I had made, but also clarifying for me the special risks I still had.  My family loved and supported me, allowing me to “try” to continue being a pastor, but they also recognized that, before long, I would resign myself to the obvious.  Several things happened all at once that I won’t detail here, but each one helped me realize that the church needed to go in directions in which I could not go.  In a most gentle way, God seemed to say, “Enough Bob, I release you, now it is time to say goodbye,” and so I did.  All along the church had been His, not mine, and I recognized I was leaving my church in very good hands.

Long ago I read a book by Dallas Willard entitled Hearing God.  He talks about God speaking to us through our friends, books, the magazines we pick up and read.  But most of all we need to listen – listen to what is going on within us and to our surrounding circumstances, yes, but especially listen to the voice of God through Scripture. Having spent all my adult life listening to the voice of God through His Word, I continued to do so.

I could share a number of Scriptures with you and will likely do so in future writings, but one passage virtually leaped out of the Bible as though it was addressed personally to me, Isaiah 43:18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”  And listening, I found God nudging me to let go and move forward, for as God had always made the way for me before, He would do so again.

And He has.

I realize that in many ways my reflections on discerning the hand of God may seem inadequate or at least incomplete.  We really do want easy three step procedures in discovering what God wants in our lives, an easy formula that works every time.  Sometimes we treat God like a butler who we expect to come in and clean up our mess.  Or, we see Him as an architect that has a blueprint, and everything must go exactly according to design or else.  Oh, if I could just get my hands on that blueprint!  Or maybe we can just google it, type in the right query, and there is the answer, just like that!  So quick, so easy, so impersonal…

I wonder… 

I wonder how Jesus made it clear to the Apostle Paul when he wanted to go first to Bithynia and then Troas in Acts 16, but Jesus would not let him.  I wonder about Joseph and all those years in Egypt in Genesis 37-50, sold into slavery by his hateful brothers, tossed into a dungeon, years lost and wondering what it was all about until decades later he realized the hand of God had been active in his life all along.  I wonder about those forty years in desert for Moses in Exodus 2-4, a fugitive seemingly wasting his life and all he learned in Egypt, only to discover forty years later at a burning bush that God’s hand had been at work all along. I wonder about John on the island of Patmos in the book of Revelation, reluctantly booted from his church family, exiled far way, forced into retirement by his circumstances, never guessing that some of the most powerful images of God and the church and the cosmic battle of life were about to be played out before his eyes.

I wonder.  For all of us who have found life forcing us in directions we never thought we would go in, who have had to face a future that is often uncertain and at times more than a bit foreboding… I wonder if those are the very times God is taking us by the hand and the heart and leading us the most…

Shortly before my retirement I found a prayer written by Thomas Merton.  You may find it lacking, a bit vague, and yet it is a prayer I have returned to frequently in the last two and a half years.  I believe it honors our Lord who indeed makes a way for us through what may seem at first glance to be a desert, a God who can bring us to streams even in a wasteland.  Here is Thomas Merton’s prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you… I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

*The image I’ve attached is one of many that could be chosen picturing Moses at the burning bush.  I have always had a strong attachment to this scene in Exodus, even more so in these days.  As far as Moses was concerned, fleeing from Egypt had been his retirement and life in Midian, a life we know virtually little about, was far from what he had envisioned.  However, the burning bush encounter in Exodus 3 made it clear that God had not retired and He wasn’t going to allow Moses to do so either.  A tremendous picture of hope, I think, for those who face life circumstances that seem to change everything.