New Beginnings

Each life change comes with a sense of loss and a hope of beginnings.  The former is usually too real; the latter is wrapped in uncertainty and fear.  It is natural to long for yesterday, at least we know we made it in the end.  One doesn’t know about tomorrow.  Will we make it?  Will it be even worse than yesterday?  Will we fail in ways which bring doubt into how one sees the strengths which have come to define one’s identity?
 
It is easy to forget that today’s challenge in facing the future has one ingredient that yesterday’s success didn’t, experience.  We entered yesterday’s phase with all the doubts, fears, and uncertainties we wrestle with today.  Then we lacked something we now have with us – yesterday’s learning and growth.  We are different.  If not we have missed one of life’s great gifts.  We are wiser.  If not we have squandered the heart of the human experience.  We are better prepared.  If not we are blind to what is already within.
 
I find myself in a new phase.  The variables are very different.  The uncertainties seem to play and tug at my fears.  Yet I experience peace and calm in ways more tangible, real, and useful.  The difference lies in the work which God began decades earlier.  It isn’t as if Divinity’s work is complete.  It isn’t by a long ways.  Yet the experience, assurance of the Spirit which is there for you and me, and sense of mission are tangible supports which change the way I see things.
 
Many of those I knew before have disappeared into different life journeys.  I find myself walking a path of new beginnings.  It is familiar to all Jews, even those who are simply part of the spiritual family.  “Your people Israel were once like the sand on the seashore, but only a scattered few will return.  Destruction is ordered, brimming over with righteousness.  For the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will finish here what he started all over the globe.” (Isaiah 10.22, 23)  God’s work in and for each continues.