This is finals week so I am knee-deep in grading papers. Here is one particularly encouraging quote from a student essay, where the student is addressing the question of what the nature of pastoral ministry is.

“It should be the heart of every minister that he does not lose one of the sheep that he has been given, but that he works with all his might, intellect, sweat, and blood for their sanctification so that the church, the bride of Christ, may be presented blameless before the bridegroom at the end of days.”

Well put, and Amen!