Some of the hardest but most fruitful times in life involve transition.
Think of leaving home, going off to college, getting your first job, moving to a strange city, getting married, buying a house, having kids, changing jobs, buying a bigger house, raising your kids to be adults, buying a smaller house, retiring, stepping down from a place of leadership, moving to where your kids are or where the sun shines, leaving your house behind and buying a condo, looking after grandkids and getting ready to move one last time into a retirement residence.
My mother made her first transition at 23 and the last at 98. That’s 75 years of transition. So transition, for most of us, is something we had better try to figure out. Constant change, as the saying goes, is here to stay.
We can laugh, but every one of these steps involves challenge, fear and often pain, yet we have to get through them to get to the other side for what God has in store next.
Elaine has always said (and speaking from considerable experience) that what the doctors call transition is the hardest part of labour. That’s the bit where the baby really starts to enter into childbirth. It’s painful, but it has to happen for the baby to be born.
Transition is hard because it always involves leaving something behind without the guarantee of receiving something else. And so people hold on to things far longer than they should. The Toronto metropolitan area, real estate studies show, is full of older people living in big houses who just won’t do the sensible thing and cash out in spite of all the assets they could realize. The resulting lack of supply on the market drives the prices up and makes it impossible for young people to buy a house at all.
It’s easy to make applications elsewhere. People hang on to positions in church leadership instead of raising up younger people to replace them. Parents try to hold on to their children and never really let them go, even when they get married. Employers and employees alike refuse to retire and make way for younger folk to take their place.
When it comes to church leadership, it may be hard to step down from a position which may give a sense of identity or recognition, but one of the best transitions is letting go of the burden of executive leadership and becoming a father or mother in God who cheers the kids on in the hope they do better than we’ve done. You’ll find in the process that you may get more people listening to you than you ever did when you had the title.
If you’re not facing some kind of transition now, you soon will be. The best way to get through it is to see transition as the doorway to the next great opportunity God has for you. Shutting the door behind me for the last time on the house we raised our kids in was one of the hardest things I had to do, but it opened new horizons we never dreamed of.
And the last transition, as we pass into the eternal presence of the Lord, is the hardest but best of all.
In the end, it’s always worth the pain to receive the reward of being in the centre of God’s will.
CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH DAVID & ELAINE CAMPBELL IN HELPING TO SUSTAIN THEIR ACTIVE MINISTRY.
AWAKENING MINISTRIES // FOUNDATION of FAITH Project
Foundation of Faith Project is strengthening generations in faith and bringing beautiful changes to the communities around them. Through teaching, mentoring and coaching, many are finding out who they are and who they are destined to be. They are bringing more to their world. David Campbell is the key leader in this initiative and you can support him financially directly through Awakening Ministries.
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