The Commissioning Before the Storm

When Sarah Chen graduated from seminary in May 2019, her parents drove twelve hours from Sacramento to watch her walk across the stage. Her father, who had never fully understood her calling, squeezed her hand afterward and said, "I see it now. This is exactly who you were made to be." It was the deepest affirmation she had ever received.

Three weeks later, she arrived at her first church assignment — a small congregation in rural Kentucky that was splitting apart over finances, grieving a pastor who had left under scandal, and averaging nineteen people on Sunday mornings. Her first board meeting lasted four hours and ended with someone in tears. She drove home on dark country roads wondering if she had heard God wrong.

She hadn't. That bruising first year stripped away every romantic notion she carried about ministry and Christ replaced it with something sturdier — a faith forged not in lecture halls but in hospital rooms, parking lot arguments, and long nights of prayer.

In Mark's Gospel, the Father's voice has barely finished declaring "You are My beloved Son" before the Spirit drives Jesus straight into the wilderness. No honeymoon period. No easing in. The Almighty confirms identity and then immediately tests it, because belovedness that has never survived the desert is belovedness that has never grown roots. The good news Jesus eventually proclaims doesn't come despite the wilderness. It comes through it.