Por Christine, personal de campo de la CBF
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
—Ecclesiastes 3:1
I’ve come back to Ecclesiastes over and over again in recent days. Reminded that one season is ending, and that another is beginning. And isn’t that as it should be. Hard though it may be.
Our lives are about seasons, people, places, jobs, pets, friends, family, churches, they come and they go. They enrich our lives, they shape us and change us. Make more of us than we otherwise would be and then, more often than not, things shift and change, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. Sometimes of our own choosing, other times not.
Our most natural inclination, I think, is to resist change. We’re hesitant to lean in to what we do not know or cannot see. We’re wired to choose the familiar over and over again, even when it isn’t the healthiest or safest option. Familiarity feels safer than change, even when it isn’t. This is (one of) the great gifts of our faith, the assurance of God’s presence with us. The reminder that faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. That when every rational thing in life tells us otherwise, we hold on to a stubborn hope that says trust me. I am God and you are not. Just as the seasons change from fall to winter and into spring again, so too with the seasons of our lives, the daily rhythms and the seasons that seem to never end and the seasons that come to a close sooner than we would have liked.
In March, I watched the sun set over Lake Victoria one final time, grateful for one more chance to spend time in this place, to share work and ministry here. And it felt like closure, the ending of a chapter. Knowing that as I boarded a plane the next morning, time would be marked. As I move towards reassignment in Europe, climbing up the stairs to board a plane to Nairobi and onward to Paris marked the end of this season serving across Africa and the Middle East, at least for now. And two weeks later as I watched the sun set over the Mediterranean with friends and colleagues from our Europe team, soon to be my new teammates, time marked a new beginning for us. The beginning of a new season, a lived expression of the promise of our faith—Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. This is what it means to live as easter people, to practice resurrection, to live out what we claim to believe—that death doesn’t get the final word, that new life always comes and that it comes out of death.
Change is a practice of proclamation if we’ll let it be. A chance to practice what we preach. To live like we believe what we claim. That though the ending of a season might feel like death, (and in some ways it may actually be), our God is making all things new, a promise that we know is true. May we trust that promise with our actual lives.