I’ve wondered before, how do people in vocational ministry, particularly preachers and teachers, do their work while they sin?

I’ve looked at our pastor before and wondered how he is still walking, talking, reading, and writing with the constant presence of God weighting his every step. Maybe that doesn’t sound that bad – maybe that’s what we want for ourselves! But as someone who spends every day learning in some way about the character of God through his Word, I’m still working it out.

Sometimes God’s Word is a place of comfort for me but lately it has felt more like a pressure. There’s the pressure you assume I’m talking about – teachers, after all, are judged more strictly than others, and I do feel the pressure to learn well and teach well. Sometimes the pressure is from the inside: excitement, joy, and an unworldly gratitude. The pressure I feel right now, though, comes from the mixing of two incompatible substances. Oiled water, salted snow. Darkened light. How can a preacher eat, sleep, and think, saturated in the light of the gospel, when the inky darkness of habitual sin is always seeping in at the edges?

Sitting here after a long day of fruitless thought, I feel the heaviness – the weight of his glory – but my jaw is tensed and my temples throb. My heart sinks instead of being buoyed up by hope. A raindrop instead of a snowflake. There is no darkness in light. So how is it that I bring my own darkness into my studies? Sometimes, the light of God banishes that darkness, forgiven and forgotten. And sometimes the light seems filtered by the shreds of willful disobedience swirling in my heart and mind.

I didn’t have as much time as I thought I needed to prepare my lesson for yesterday’s Women’s Sunday School class. It went fine, and I actually enjoyed myself, but today began with an ashy cloud of anxiety. See, this week, as opposed to the last two weeks, I have far less information and fewer applications for what I’m teaching… six days from now. (Another aside – a sermon every week??) But what, you ask, does this have to do with oil and water?

It’s interesting to discover how powerfully circumstance affects how I think about my sin and disobedience to God. Today, I woke up hurting. Scratch that. I slept hurting, and it was about 4 am that I reached for the naproxen bottle. It used to happen a lot, but lately it’s only been an issue when I overdo it in the workout department. Add general crankiness to the anxiety and pain and even the most snow I’ve seen outside my own windows didn’t cheer me up today.

My lesson for Sunday is about typology in the Bible. Today, I was specifically studying about how God, in the Hebrew Scriptures, never expects us to speak his language. Who could possibly probe the thoughts of the Almighty God? So, just as He humbled himself to come down to Mount Sinai to speak with Moses, He has always condescended to speak our language.

Let’s just say that I hit more than a few walls in my lesson planning today. I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing. So, what did I do? I’d love to say that I got down on my knees and prayed for a change of heart. Or that I just plowed on with my day, trusting that God would use my best efforts no matter what. Or… I could abandon the God I think about all day long to seek my solutions for my problem. God is all around me, all the time and everywhere. I see God in everything, and sometimes I wonder how I can possibly live this intensely for very long.

I can hear when the Holy Spirit tells me that what I’m about to do is against God’s will. There is absolutely no way I can trick myself out of that. And that’s the rub. How, how can I acknowledge that it is against the will of the Sovereign Lord of Creation to do something… and then turn and do it? Blood in water, discarded bread. I cannot stop sinning, though I think I can get better at obeying. I cannot stop sinning and I cannot stop singing. How can I turn away when You are all around me? The more I read the Bible, the better I understand Jesus’ disciples. They fled. They fled. Praise the Lord of heaven that there is nowhere I can flee from this love.

Forgiveness – not an individual act, not a state of mind, but rays of light shining through broken glass. I’m not drowning, no. But I’m not floating or swimming either, and that’s what drives me crazy. I’m just suspended, waiting. I was forgiven before I sinned, so why does the guilt linger? Should I move forward right away? It’s like my sin never happened… until it does again. But wallowing in the depths of my failings is self-indulgent and betrays the freedom I gained when Christ died.

Pressure, constant pressure. How can I turn away when I am surrounded? But… surrounded by what?

God is always there, but so am I. And I am not destroyed. Oil in water, water in oil.