Transitions

   Life is full of transitions.  Some we expect and some we are thrown into. It's funny how they work- one moment you are here and the next you are suddenly moving to there. There, and the journey to that destination, can be clearly defined and planned for. Other times, it's one unknown step-into-the- dark at a time. Any number of emotions can accompany such times, but one thing is certain. It is at such junctures that the faith we ascribe to, talk about, proclaim, and even teach, takes center stage. Like Job, we are faced with the challenge of learning that what we had heard before must now become what we see (Job 42:5).
   Sometimes the transitions come in a start-and-stop way, kicking us out of what "was", but leaving us dangling before the "what will be".  I've heard this place referred to as a threshold, which I find so fitting. The place between rooms where you have stepped out of the one, but not yet entered the next. The in between, the place of waiting, a place not always enjoyable to be in, but always God's purposeful place of work. Undoing, repair, preparation, and even rest.  Trusting God to know what He's doing, what we need, how to get us there, and that this good God really is good and full of love for us.  
   Oswald Chambers describes this kind of faith perfectly, in his commentary on Abraham's "going out, not knowing where he was going" (Heb 11:8). "Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. It is a life of faith, not of intellect and reason, but a life of knowing Who makes us “go.” When my focus is there, not on the circumstances around me, or the transition, where I've been or where I'm headed, but on the One who is in control (and has been all along), it is then I know His rest.