Benediction from Ep 222

Morgan Snyder

“ … a benediction of sorts as a way to recover the gospel of initiation and apprenticeship with our imagination towards the second-half of life. Some of you might be there and some of you might be deeply immersed in this reality of recovering initiation

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second-half of life. It’s a vision for the path and process that then helps us orient to be able to say, ‘God here am I’ and in that place God can say, ‘I am here with you.’

With that in mind, I want to give this benediction that pulses with the heartbeat of a heart set on pilgrimage in the second-half of life.

May you be blessed to allow this shifting, this orientation to become a new way of being. May you allow it to inform a lifestyle of living from Sabbath rest and not for it. You may think you’re organizing your next chapter, but perhaps God is reorganizing you. The temptation ahead is not obvious sin, it is subtle ambition, baptised as service. It’s carrying the world again. It’s becoming indispensable. Refuse it. The second-half of life is entering the years of becoming a sage.

Sages are not primarily builders, they are reservoirs. People leave their presence with more of God and less anxiety. Become that kind of person, a non-anxious presence. Stay close to Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Stay close to those entrust to your care, deeply rooted in the small, robust, redemptive communities. Messy and nurtured by love. Keep walking, keep consenting, become increasingly hidden and increasingly radiant. There is no hurry, the kingdom can wait for your soul. Remember the second-half of life is not a decline, it is a slow conversion from strength to love after you’ve spent time helping others become the type of people that God can entrust with the care of His Kingdom.

The Paradox becomes that God can entrust you with something harder than a global ministry, it’s to receive your own belovedness apart from usefulness. We are our Father’s son, our Father’s daughter. Perhaps we are being invited and blessed, yet again, to become who we are and perhaps this is the deepest apprenticeship of all.

Grace and peace to you. Pause and take the time to reflect and wonder what God might be saying.”