Transition & Following God without Signs from the Sky

As I've been moving out of my house, I've been thinking about the process of transition.  Be it changes between jobs, homes, relationships, or even weather patterns, transition is really quite a normal place for everybody... it's too bad we don't really like it here.  I think what happens is that in the waiting for the rhythms of our new lives, we mourn the old and familiar rhythms, but mainly, we just seem to lose ourselves in the uncertainty of waiting for the next thing.

Something even as small as planning a lunch date with a friend for the next week is cause for upheaval because you don't know if that one job is going to call you back for an interview that happens to fall on the exact day and time that you were planning on meeting said friend who is now completely inconveniencing the establishment of the next season of your life so now, you don't know if you will be able to make rent for the place that you've been looking at in that neighborhood near your favorite coffee shop and you're never going to know if this is the dream job where you meet your future husband who happens to work in the logistics department and so now, you will be alone, have no money, and will live in the dodgy part of town all for the exchange of an afternoon turkey sandwich- thanks a lot, friend.  No, I will not have lunch with you.  

Certainly, the thought process is rarely this dramatic but nevertheless, until the next thing comes along, you don't want to get too comfortable.  We therefore stay in this place of limbo as life leaves us hanging- and we hate it when we're uncomfortable, don't we?  It's a confusing thing, and in your twenties, transition seems to come in waves.

As a Christian, I feel that transition can be particularly more interesting- some would say more difficult, although that would be slightly ironic- because of the added pressure of wanting to please God.  How many Christians have you heard say, "I'll go there if it's in God's plan" or "I'll date so-and-so if we're meant to be together, in God's plan?"  I don't mean to patronize nor devalue these concerns colored by the desire to please God, because I, too, desire to please God and not "step out of his plan."  Sometimes, I know we all just wish that God would come down to us from the sky in light, clouds and thunder telling us what to do next with our lives.  Wouldn't that be so much easier?  Isn't that what God's supposed to do is tell us what to do next?  Maybe, but I think that there are a couple of reasons that God doesn't normally work like this with us.

1. Living life in full sometimes means taking a life path that seems to meander. You're right.  It would be easier if God just told us what to do, but that would be too easy.  Scripture even says that we are meant to live life in full and what kind of life is one that just gets told what happens next?  We don't like it when somebody tells us what happens next in the Harry Potter or Game of Throne series so why ought we expect this for our own lives?  I think life in full looks like making choices, sometimes the wrong ones which lead to mistakes, which lead to us learning, which lead to us growing, which lead to us learning to love ourselves more and learning to love God more.  I don't think God let's us make mistakes just for the sake of watching us fall on our faces but so that we might develop thicker skin for when harder things do come along and so that when that does happen, we learn to lean on him when times get tough.

Besides, what do we actually mean when we ask God to lead us to the next thing?  I don't know about you, but for me, a lot of times it has meant, "God please tell me the next thing to do that is going to make me the most happy and experience the least amount of pain."  If we're honest with ourselves, this is what might be the underlying current of our obsessive prayers to God.

2. The idea of one single life path might just limit the vastness and creativeness of God.  Now, don't get me wrong, I do believe that sometimes God will just tell us what to do and where to go, etc.  But more often than not, he gives us choices.  I think that we need to escape the dangerous thinking that one choice will lead to riches, happiness, abundance, and a Mercedes while the other choice will lead to certain doom.

My most recent decision was to go on staff at either Cal State LA or UCR.  Of course, I freaked out and asked God to lead me where to go next.  After about a week, I was able to come up with a pretty fleshed out pros-cons list for either school.  It was pretty nice, except that both options were still comparable and God hadn't yet told me which one to go to! Any day now God...  At the end of the day, I think the choice is still mine to make: neither of these is going to lead to a Mercedes nor doom.  I think the real situation is that I have freedom to choose either school because either way I'm going to do my best work and will try to serve God by loving whichever campus I go to. I'm sure there will be bumps in the road at either school, but with this shift in perspective, is there really anyway that I could believe that God would abandon me because I might've made the wrong choice?  I don't think that's how he works.  The thought that God has chosen one single path trajectory for each of our lives does indeed limit him- a God who is completely sovereign over all things and who has a knack for making loopy situations somehow work out for the good of us who love him.

So friends, be encouraged.  Yes, wade in the oceans of transition, asking God to lead you.  But also know that God has given us freedom to go places and experience life in making choices.  Our attempts to follow Him will be honored as he guides us through our good and bad choices.  That's just the nature of a God who is madly in love with a people meandering-quite clumsily- through life.  So, just do something.