Searching for answers

I think I imagined that, on leaving university, I would have all the answers. I don’t mean that I thought I would know all there is to know about my subject but, on completing my degree, it would just be clear what was next. This isn’t what happened. I graduated without a clue of what was next. In addition to that, I felt huge pressures to have a plan for my life and to be able to tell a story of how things would all work out. Yet I had no answers. All I had was an invitation, which for me meant living for a year in London’s East End of London to see what would happen.

In Starting Point we’ve begun reading the Gospel of Mark. It starts out with few answers but there is an invitation, to those desperate for good news in their world, to journey alongside Jesus. It won’t be easy. There will be conflict. There will be pain and death. Followers will also, at least occasionally, look like fools. Yet, if you go on that journey, your mind might just open to all that life is about, and your heart might encounter a love that turns out to be a signpost to your reason for being.

London was hard. There was conflict among colleagues and pain when a relationship fell apart. Yet it was here that a path became visible and where I would be known as someone who was responding to Jesus’ invitation and, in doing that, find joy in believing I had something valuable to share. Travelling on that path led today to being chaplain at my local hospital. That was not the answer I’d expected when I left university but, for me, it feels an important part of the invitation I read in Mark’s Gospel.

I’m looking forward to reading the book of Mark with Starting Point over the next couple of weeks, and being open to whatever happens along the way.