Moving

DAILY BYTE

I write these words in the midst of many boxes piled all around me, as today I’m moving house. I must confess I’m not a huge fan of packing. But I recognize it as a necessary part of the moving process – gathering all of one’s ‘stuff’ together to take from one place to another. It’s a sobering process, that reveals in a very stark way how easily we accumulate all sorts of things. Looking around at all these boxes, I find myself asking how much of all of this is really necessary for the living of my life. And so, while I’m not a huge fan of packing, I am grateful for the chance it has given me to ‘lighten my load’. Certainly, one of the great gifts of moving is the opportunity it presents to let go of the unnecessary clutter that so quickly fills our lives.

In the midst of all of this, this morning I heard from a friend who lives in London, who described the beautiful autumn colours that are transforming a usually drab city into a magical wonderland. On this brutally hot day on this southern tip of Africa, the thought of falling autumn leaves seems very distant indeed. But they are a dramatic reminder of the ‘letting go’ that is an indispensable part of every transition, and the beauty that such letting go in fact adds to the world.

You may not be in the process of moving house right now, but there are many other transitions that regularly come our way in the normal course of life, as surely as one season follows the next. So what transitions may you be navigating right now? A new job? A new relationship? A new season without the presence of a loved one? A new insight into an old problem? A new opportunity to offer your one miraculous life to some magnificent purpose?

As you prepare to move into that which awaits, exciting or scary as that may be, what are you taking with you? What have you known that you would carefully pack up to ensure that it is a part of this new season in your life? What lessons, values, attitudes and memories from the past do you need to safeguard and nurture, because of the vibrant life they still promise to bring?

And then what are you needing to let go of; either because it’s worthless clutter that is just suffocating you, or because it’s served its purpose and its time has now past? Calcified convictions, prejudice, old habits, narrow certitudes, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness? Think what it would mean for you to take the courageous, liberating decision not to pack those things. To know the wonder of an authentically fresh beginning.

The good news is that God, who is at every ending and every beginning, affirms the blessings and beauty of our past while recognizing the bruised and broken dimensions of it too, and then with quite spectacular grace promises to make all things new!

PRAY AS YOU GO

Thank you Lord God that at every ending and at every beginning you are there. Thank you that in the transition times of our lives, yours is a sure and faithful presence, calling us forward, encouraging us not to be afraid to let go of that which is past and to embrace that which is new. Give us the strength and courage to trust you, and to relinquish ourselves completely into your care. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Isaiah 43:19-21

“I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert...
to give drink to my people, whom I created for myself,
that they might declare my praise.”