Letting go of the old even before figuring out the new

Transition. I was in it.

Transitioning into life on the mission field can be a slow process—

• stumbling through unknowns,
• waiting for elusive answers, and
• figuring out new identities.

It’s an offbeat experience because people lose their bearings, they live in an in-between state—awkward, incomplete.

Transition is stretching, re-thinking, expanding.

It’s a vulnerable time,

a time of letting go of the old

even before figuring out the new.

My Seattle roots had been torn up,

yet I had not put down roots in Lomalinda.

I was neither here nor there. 

(from Chapter 9, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go)

Transition is a time of necessary breaking—breaking from the familiar and the comfortable and the knowable.

A necessary breaking. Necessary because:

“God uses broken things.

It takes broken soil to produce a crop,

broken clouds to give rain,

broken grain to give bread,

broken bread to give strength.”

Vance Havner

Transition is a time of patching broken pieces together to form a new person, a new home, a newly remodeled and defined family. A new ministry.

And whether we realize it at the time or not, the Bible has given us many instructions to get us through the transitioning and breaking and remaking.

“. . . Be strong and brave. . . .

The Lord your God will be with you everywhere you go.”

(Joshua 1:9, NCV)

“Be patient in trouble and pray continually.”

(Romans12:12)

  

Transitioning into life on the mission field is a time to pray, hope, wait, and hang on for dear life.

“At just the right time, we will reap a harvest of blessing

if we don’t give up.

(Galatians 6:9)