Life is full of transitions – some large-scale, some small. We are birthed. (What a transition!) We learn to crawl, and often then to walk. We may meet the Savior of the world – and come to have a role in birthing others, too. We may sometime enjoy the honor of growing old. We will experience joys and challenges along the way, successes and failures, happy conclusions and occasional dead ends. Life is full of passages like these.
This is true for organizations, too. We are “birthed” as an organization. We gradually learn to “walk.” We learn things, come to produce things, come to adapt and (hopefully) “grow up.” We will experience successes and failures along the way. Organizations experience passages, too.
Our own little community is just in the process of several important transitions. (I anticipate retirement soon; so do several of my age-mates. And opportunities for ministry abound!) Over the next few months, I hope to comment on the process, a little. I will have our own organizational transitions in mind, of course. Yet I hope that my comments may be encouraging at a personal level, too. I am in transition. Maybe you are, too (or will be sometime). Life itself is full of transitions, after all.
Here is the first thing that comes to mind, often enough, at moments of important transitions: we remember things. We remember where we have come from, how things have been until now, what we have learned about God and ourselves, how we have been led through the years. “Stand at the crossroads, and look,” said the prophet, at an important time of transition for the Hebrew people. “Ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).
It is reported that our entire lives pass before our minds in the dark passage from life to death: and it may be true. In the lighter passages of life, too, much will “pass before our minds”: this I know from personal experience. I remember escorting my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. In the course of those few brief moments, I remembered all the years of her childhood, it seemed. I remembered her baptism, then her first words and first tentative steps. I remembered sending her off to school. I remembered her confirmation, graduation, and when she sometimes fell in love. All of this is natural, right and wholesome. One “stands at the crossroads,” appreciates “the ancient paths,” rests oneself in their sure footing – and steps into and through the passages of life. God has wired us this way, I think. God wires communities this way, too – with a capacity for remembering.
Yet remembering, if this is all we do, can get us into trouble. We can go all wistful and nostalgic, on the one hand: syrupy, sentimental, snuggled away in some cozy and idealized past. This kind of remembering is not simply schmaltzy: it is seditious in the end. It is easily disloyal to God’s actual, particular, present calling in our lives – God’s calling in our lives for today.
The people of Israel remembered things in this way, sometimes.
When rescued from the Pharaoh and set on pilgrimage to the Promised Land – they remembered leeks, of all things. Weren’t the leeks delicious, back in Egypt? How did we leave them behind? Slavery wasn’t all that bad! Maybe we should return (Numbers 11:5)?
When rescued from Babylon and set on pilgrimage to Jerusalem – they remembered the glitter of Solomon’s long-destroyed temple. Wasn’t it wonderful back then? How could we build anything remotely comparable today? Our efforts are too puny. Why even try (cf. Ezra 3:12f, Haggai 2:3)?
This kind of remembering is a pure dead end.
We can go all mortified and regretful, sometimes, too: spinning and churning “what might have been,” or “what should have been done,” and so on. We can churn about in questions like these indefinitely. And when we do, this amounts to sedition, too.
I am reminded of a poignant scene from Prince Caspian, book two in The Chronicles of Narnia. (I have been re-reading the series recently.) Peter and Edmund, Susan and Lucy – the Kings and Queens of Narnia – have wandered off the path a bit, en route to their rendezvous with Caspian. Things have not gone well for the children. They are weary. They are filled with regret. What if they had followed the path more closely? What if they had listened better for Aslan’s voice? What if? What if?
Then Aslan himself appears. No one may know what might have been, said Aslan. That sort of question is not allowed. (I paraphrase.) Yet everyone may know what will come to be. You discover what will be by living it.
Here is the first thing I want to share concerning successful transitions: they are correctly rooted in things past – yet they must be lived in forward gear. The past must serve the present and future: if we put things the other way around, we have gone sappy and nostalgic – or (what is worse) perilously regretful. We will get stuck in the past in that case.
Here is what another prophet said, at another time of important transition long ago:
“Don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new” (Isaiah 43: 18,19, The Message; italics added). And: “I have a lot more to tell you, things you never knew existed… brand-new…” (48:6).
Other posts in this Transitions series: