October is
“Clergy Appreciation Month,” and I am humbled by the kind comments I see
directed toward pastors’ families, through Facebook memes and various events
online. Having been in the ministry for
almost twenty years, I can assure you that anyone who honors their pastor will
be blessed by the Lord and will reap what only God can give. We pastors’ families are mere humans, full of
failings, and we don’t always deserve the kind accolades bestowed on us. God honors those who give “double honor” to
their pastor, not because the pastor is always perfect, but because those lay
people are actually choosing to honor God’s order for leadership and the
gravity of His calling and His gospel.
But there is
a flip side to the concept of honoring clergy.
Proverbs reminds us, “A gracious woman retaineth honor.” Graciousness can make a pastor’s wife easy to
honor. What are some ways that we as
pastor’s wives can demonstrate graciousness to the flocks that God has called
us to serve? Maybe you are a new pastor’s
wife. I hope I can encourage you with
some practical ways that God is teaching me to work on graciousness.
1. Gracious pastor’s wives are thankful.
Whether it’s
a pot of chili or a check for $50.00 tucked into a Christmas card, we need to
show thankfulness for every kind deed, large or small. To forget to say thanks is to convey
entitlement—not a pretty image any pastor’s wife wants attached to her
character.
One of the
nicest ways to demonstrate thankfulness is through a very old-fashioned and oft-forgotten
tradition that seems to be waning more and more every year: Thank you notes! It doesn’t have to be a novel, but just a
short, hand-written note means a great deal to people. When my lazy self resists that idea of
writing a thank you note, the Lord often reminds me that the time it takes to
write that note is still much shorter than the time it took the other person to
bless me.
Growing up,
my brothers and I had a great-aunt who was famously eccentric and difficult to
get along with. Amazingly, though, she
often showered us with her unusual gifts—food (sometimes out of date . . .),
clothes (equally out of date), and hand-crocheted hats and blankets. She once admitted to my mom that she liked to
give us these things because we always sent her thank you notes. I can imagine her walking around her old
house, looking for things she could donate to us just so she could get a
card! If even an eccentric, crusty woman
appreciated hand-written notes from second-graders, I bet our church members
like them too.
The business
world also recognizes the importance of a well-crafted thank you. Companies who are successful at interpersonal
relationships often remind their employees to avoid texting and emailing
thank-you’s. Thank you cards cost $1.00
(for eight!) at the Dollar General. We
can do this! J
2. Gracious pastor’s wives are not “scrappy.”
I love “scrapping.” I’m the oldest of three kids—and the only
sister. “Scrapping” could have been a career choice for me. When my kids scrap, I know where they got
that tendency.
In the
requirements for pastors, “not a brawler,” and “no striker” show up in the
famous list of I Timothy 3. I can’t
imagine God was licensing the pastor’s wife
to be known for either of those qualities either.
How can we
avoid scrapping? Here’s a principle to
help us as women to remain consistent in our dealings with people: Godly women are commanded to teach women and to train children. We don’t
have jurisdiction over men (which eliminates needless arguments or the temptation
to correct a man in the congregation), and we don’t have the command to fight. (Remember, ladies--we’re helpmeets, not
bulldogs!) Any confrontation we find ourselves in needs to fall under the
category of teaching (women and
children) or training (younger women
or children). Sarcasm, gossip, angry debates,
defensiveness, viciousness, and other fleshly endeavors are eliminated when we
keep our mission in sight.
I am convicted when I read the following excerpt from Rosalind Goforth’s painfully honest autobiography, Climbing as she describes an incident she had while serving in China as a missionary wife:
“One evening
as I lay on a couch beside a paper window . . . two Chinese women seated
themselves outside the window. I could
not help hearing what they said. They
were, of course, quite unconscious of my closeness to them. At first they talked with much kindness and
sympathy . . . Then began a most amazing and searching dissection . . . of my
life and character. . . Incidents with the servants, which I had thought
trivial, such as a stern rebuke, a hasty word or gesture, were all given their
full value. During the process of
dissection they did, however, find some good points. One said, ‘She speaks our
language well and is a zealous preacher.’ The other admitted, ‘And she does
love us. But it’s her impatience, her
quick temper!’ Then came what struck me
as a blow, ‘If she only would live more as she preaches!’”
Rosaline
Goforth humbly shared that story at her own expense, to our benefit, and she
went on to be used greatly of the Lord as she surrendered her tongue to Him. Pastor’s wives: Gracious women don’t snap and fight.
3. Gracious pastor’s wives are hard workers.
Not workaholics—for the “Marthas” out there
who may be tempted to pounce on this point and create another “to do” list for
themselves! Proverbs 31 describes many
qualities of the virtuous woman (which ought to describe the pastor’s wife as
well). One of them is that she “riseth also
while it is yet night.” She works hard
enough to be able to provide assistance for her servants, the poor, and her own
family.
I remember
many years ago hearing of a pastor’s wife who admitted to her church friends
that she just could not bring herself to get out of bed before 11:00 in the
morning. It was her custom to retire in
the early morning hours, and then to rise around lunch time.
The Bible
commands congregants to bestow “double honor” upon their pastor, but that can
be challenging when laziness has crept into the parsonage. Most lay people must get up before dawn in
order to have time with the Lord and then leave for work by 6:30 or 7:00 each
workday. They sacrifice sleep and energy
in order to be faithful to evening services, Saturday workdays, and special
meetings. A gracious pastor’s wife works
hard at being a good steward of her time and does not allow laziness to become
a stumbling block to those around her.
Am I a Soldier of the Cross?
(verse 2)
Must I be
carried to the skies
On flowery
beds of ease,
While others
fought to win the prize,
And sailed
through bloody seas?
The hymn
writer is not intending to convey here that heaven is obtained by human work or
effort. Ephesians 2:8 – 9 make it clear
that salvation is “not by works of righteousness which we have done.” But the Christian life down here is a battle.
In our own generation, we work alongside servants of God whose ministry is
fraught with persecution, intense labor, and severe cost. Have we as Americans succumbed to the faulty
thinking that we somehow signed up for a “low cost” ministry?
4. Gracious pastor’s wives are joyful.
Joyfulness
is what makes Christianity believable. It’s one of the first ways that God’s power
is recognizable in our lives. Many
times lay people come to church carrying enormous sorrows, hidden underneath
friendly handshakes and smiles.
Inwardly, they are grieving the painful choices of rebellious children,
frightening illnesses, broken marriages,
and crushing financial burdens. And from
their seat in the pew, they watch quietly.
Do they see a pastor’s wife who has found the Lord to be her source of joy, even on a day when attendance is
down, people have been critical, and the offering is meager? Or do they see frustration and tension on our
faces from a busy week of homeschooling?
Do they hear anger in our voices, when we correct the rowdy kids in the
front row? The joy of the Lord is what
strengthens us—and what offers hope to those who come to us with their wide
array of puzzling and intimidating trials.
5. Gracious pastor’s wives love well.
As others
have pointed out—“love” is a verb. It’s
easy to say that we love people, but our actions betray our hearts.
Love difficult people.
The book of Matthew calls them “enemies.” Do my enemies know that I love them? My dog, Tippy, naturally likes nice people. As Christians, we have Jesus’ power inside of
us to love enemies. I was once an enemy
of God, and Jesus loved me while I was a sinner.
Love the unlovely.
One of the most challenging jobs God ever gave me was to help to clean
an apartment that had been infested with roaches. The walls and curtains were blanketed with
crawling bugs. The refrigerator and freezer
were lined with dead roaches that had tried to escape the cold temperatures by
crawling out of the packaged food. Even
the books were filled with cockroaches, dozens of them pinned between the
pages. The cupboards were sticky with
the residue of years of infestation. In
the end, God did a much greater work in my own heart than what I was able to
accomplish in that sad apartment. He exposed
how repulsed I was by the unlovely; how very selfish and self-righteous I was
when I was allowed to compare myself to the dweller of that apartment. He showed me how quickly I could resent that
person for letting things get that bad, and how much I thought I deserved to be
thanked for my efforts. My heart was even
uglier than the walls of cockroaches I had just tried to clean.
Love the forgotten.
I am still touched by a photograph I once saw of Elisabeth Elliot, the
missionary to Ecuador whose husband was murdered by savages in 1956. Before flying back to the United States,
Elisabeth stopped at a remote village to inform the Christians there that her husband
had gone to heaven. A Life Magazine
photographer caught an image of Elisabeth sadly saying goodbye from her car,
while the Indian women openly wept and crowded around the window. They were a poor, forgotten, woebegone little
band—missing teeth and dressed in rags, hair hanging unkempt around their lonely
faces. Forgotten by the rest of the
world, they were loved by the Elliots, and Jim Elliot’s death grieved them
sorely. That photograph speaks volumes
to me. When I go to heaven, I want to be missed by the forgotten people.
The Apostle Paul
said, “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he
counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment