00:00 Start
01:08 “Things end, there is a time of fertile emptiness, and then things begin anew.”
It’s no question that we live a lifetime of transitions. We can all attest to the experience of discomfort that comes when we feel the
01:28 fracture in the continuity of our lives.
Endings are going to come, as are new beginnings, but first we must traverse the in-between.
Some transitions come by choice and are positive. Others are thrust upon us and inflict suffering and trauma. Examples: being newly married (ending of singleness), bereavement (ending of a relationship by death or separation), work promotion, major illness, going back to college, retirement… positive or negative, transitions compel us to navigate new spaces.
New growth requires new soil. Endings are the clearing process, producing fertile soil for the new planting.
Let’s look at four aspects of the ending experience.
02:00 Disengagement
Remember the ending of normal life for Jesus? He disengaged from his natural family and quickly launched into a forty day wilderness season. He entered the in-between. A new beginning emerged on the horizon. It was a glorious three and a half years, culminating in another ending. After a brief in-between season, the resurrection launched him into a new beginning.
02:49 Even the incarnation was an ending of sorts for Jesus.
Although He existed in the form and unchanging essence of God… possessing the fullness of all the divine attributes - the entire nature of deity, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or asserted as if He did not already possess it, or was afraid of losing it, but emptied Himself without renouncing or diminishing His deity, but only temporarily giving up the outward expression of divine equality and His rightful dignity by assuming the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Phil. 2:7 TPT
A temporary disengagement from his heavenly glory, to embrace human limitations. Heaven to earth is quite a massive transition. Of course not all transitions are so neat and clean, preplanned from eternity. Some in my life have more resembled the prophet Jonah. He was on the run from ministry (I can relate) and thought he was headed for the city of Tarshish. Even when our disengagements are not the wisest, God is the Master of redirecting.
03:03 Disidentification
It’s been described as the inner side of the disengagement process.
03:13 Self definition, once clear and obvious becomes blurry and indistinct.
03:35 Though painful, I discovered that who I am in Christ, a beloved son of God, is an identity that is rock solid in my life.
04:04 Disenchantment
04:20 Transition also goes against the grain of our Western culture, which sees growth and spiritual formation as an additive process.
04:54 Disenchantments may be small and hardly impact us, or large and devastating. A lover who is unfaithful, leaders or organizations that betrayed your trust, idols that proved to be dull and unfulfilling.
05:16 Times when you yourself turned out to not exactly be the person you thought you were.
05:36 Disorientation
Deepening feelings of being disengaged, disidentified, and disenchanted, leads us down the path of feeling lost and confused. I’m not really sure where I am right now, aka disoriented. Old goals and plans seem “old.” The future looks tenuous.
09:05 My life will never be without a story for the Author lives in me.
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