Sunday, September 27, 2020

Transitions

Last week we celebrated Jim’s 65th birthday. This week we transitioned into another season: autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring for the southern hemisphere. While I wait for hot days to move out and colder days to move in, somewhere, someone else in the world waits for snow to melt and for warmth to arrive on a gentle breeze. There are times when a season changes suddenly and dramatically, other times a change of season moves in gradually. We live where autumn never makes a grand entrance and I really have to pay attention to notice the early arrival of the season.


Are you a bit like me, finding yourself thinking as the seasons change, “I can’t wait for life to get back to normal”? Then I check myself. What is it I really want to go back to? God is doing a new thing. Do I trust God in this strange time, trust everything is under His control and His eternal plan will not fail?


Shelly Miller writes in her new book, Searching for Certainty, words to challenge my wishful thinking to go back to normal. “When uncertainty triggers the fear of scarcity, we grasp on to the familiar as comfort. Hoarding is often a first response to forecasts for which we have no control. . . . If we are honest, most of us will admit that we long for certainty more than the uncertain new things God has in mind for us.”


Draped over the back of Jim’s recliner is a quilt. This quilt, made for us when we married by a few women who attended our church, is patched together in a pattern called Transition. After the quilt was pieced, sandwiched with batting and backing, bound and quilted, it was displayed in the church foyer a few weeks before our wedding. On Sundays, many hands tied knots in the threads pulled through the beautiful fabrics and many heads bent over in prayer for us. Transition, an appropriate quilt block since we were making dramatic changes in our lives to get married.


And over these past nine years of marriage much has changed. There have been losses, unexpected hardship, and delightful surprises. In all, when I have been willing to surrender – to consent to what God has allowed – even the most difficult experiences brought good into our lives and to go back to the way it was would be to lose all that was gained. Shelly Miller continues by saying, “In fear, we can miss the obvious – that your uncertainty is God’s opportunity to reveal his great love for you.”


I sometimes become afraid. Don’t you? The world is transitioning and I do not recognize it. So much has changed – some for the worse and some for the better. People want change and often the requests for change are viable but sometimes the means undermines the desire. Groups of people being fought for are often overlooked in the fray. Are we fighting to win something or to truly change how we treat one another? These are thoughts rattling around in my head when I feel alarmed by the violent reactions, when I feel afraid and confused. Some days I feel overwhelmed by the anger and hate, by news that seems hopeless.


In her timely and relevant book, Searching for Certainty, Shelly Miller speaks into my difficulty. “Transitions are rife with awkward, uncomfortable, and offensive details that make the promise of a new season a mockery of hope. . . . Overexposure [as in photography] is defined as too much light shed on the topic. Spiritually speaking, excessive media coverage headlining wealth of bad news makes it difficult to discern God’s presence. And overexposure to bad news often leads to apathy. Like the Israelites, we begin to paint the future through the lens of what we don’t have.”


I don’t have answers or know what new normal will evolve. All I know is I have people around me, people whose lives I can share the hope of Christ. I live in a diverse community and this is the space in which I need to grow in love – these are the people I need to embrace. I have to begin here and it is really the only thing I know to do besides pray and vote. My hope is not in government but in God. To live in hope when surrounded by so much despair is to live by faith. Minnie Louise Haskins wrote these words, a picture of walking in faith and hope.


And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put thine hand into the hand of God. That shall be to thee better than light and safer than a known way.” M. L. Haskins


I reach up into the darkness and take His hand as we transition into an unknown season. I hope you will join me. We need not despair; the darkness does not overcome the Light.


3 comments:

  1. I often think that my life is not normal especially when I feel pulled in different directions or circumstances are a bit crazy. Does that mean normal is doing my own thing or what? God often interrupts my schedule but am I being abnormal for feeling disrupted by His normal? I try to remind myself that the Lord's calendar is overlaid on mine.

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  2. I enjoyed that message Julie and Jim. In the midst of all the crazy, God uses the “megaphone” of uncertainty to draw me into closer communion with him where my heart is truly at home. River’s brain surgery tomorrow, caring for my elderly mom with many up’s and downs. With loved ones in view, the world grows dim. God is near! 🥰

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    1. We returned from Texas Monday after visiting Julie's Mom and other family. Last I read, River was doing well. How goes his recovery? I have been joining in prayer with many others for him.

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