Making Space for New Things
Thoughts On Entering a New Year
I recently had an astonishing realization: I have now lived in my current town for 10 years and 7 months. Yes, I realize this is an oddly specific number. But it is significant because it means that I have now lived here longer than I have lived anywhere. Long Beach, California - where I spent most of my growing up years - held the previous record with 10 years and 6 - an even 10 and a half.
When we crash landed here at the end of our time overseas in 2015, it was my deepest wish that the Lord might grant us a place to put down some roots to raise our family. He has - very nearly - done that. Just two more years until the youngest flies. I am profoundly grateful for this. I have moved more than 20 times - and encountered far more major transitions that did not require a move! - in the span of my 46 years of life, so I don’t take this sense of stability for granted.
On the flip side, though, I am beginning to wonder if I have gotten a little TOO comfortable.
It was in another season of calm after a long season of chaos that I started to sense the early stirrings of what grew into my present call to pastoral ministry. In one of the earliest conversations I had with my then-pastor about this, he urged me to consider whether or not I was manufacturing a crisis - to consider whether I was more comfortable with crisis and change than with calm. It was a wise question.
Now I find myself considering the opposite question. Have I gotten so comfortable with “calm” and “status quo” that I have become uneasy with the possibility of change?
I was deeply challenged by this post on following the “path of most resistance”:
I’ll repeat this: I never want to choose difficulty for difficulty’s sake. That would be counterproductive. But making choices I know I need to make, even though they’ll lead to sacrifice or difficulty, seem to lead to the most beauty in my life.
Usually, the things that are most worth it are on the path of the most resistance.
~ Sarah Chapman
At one point, the call to stay put and put down roots was the “path of most resistance.” It was the call to stay that felt challenging and disorienting. Now that I have gotten comfortable with staying, I find myself resistant to change.
Of course, I am not imminently expecting any change. For all I know, January 2027 will find me right here still chugging away at what is in front of me.
But I am entering this new year with questions about what may be ahead in the next season of my life. And I will admit that it is a little unnerving to ask questions when I am not at all certain where they might lead. What might be upset in the process of seeking answers? What changes might be required of me?
The word the Lord has impressed on me for this coming year is spaciousness. This word first grabbed me during a sermon series on Sabbath that we explored last summer at my church. The Gospel text we referenced for this theme was from Luke 13:
10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
The picture this crippled woman standing tall - straightening up - breathing deeply for the first time was so vivid to me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all these months later.
There are of course many ways one can think about this idea of spaciousness:
There is a kind of spaciousness that comes from the Sabbath practices of rest, prayer, and delight.
The practice of hospitality is a form of spaciousness - making space for others.
The ideas of embodiment and incarnation connect to this idea of spaciousness as well - bodies are made of flesh and bone and physical matter that take up space - and that need to be cared for.
But perhaps what I am thinking about most of all right now with relation to the idea of spaciousness is making space for Jesus to move - of making space for Jesus to do a new thing.
Isaiah 43:18-19 says:
Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
In the original context, these words were spoken to God’s people during their time of exile in Babylon - people who were waiting and longing for the time when they would be delivered and restored to their land.
But before he speaks of this “new thing” that he is going to do, the Lord reminds them in verses 1-2 not to be afraid:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
In The Message of Isaiah, Old Testament scholar Barry Webb observes how psychologically astute the Lord is here (although perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by this!) Even though the “new things” that that the Lord is promising to do here are good things - the promise of deliverance and restoration - he understands that the natural human response to potential change is fear. And so he heads this off with the reminder that He loves them - that He will walk with them through whatever comes their way - that He will be faithful. These are “some of the tenderest words…that God ever spoke to his children,” Webb writes.1 And they are words that are every bit as applicable to us as they were for their original audience. Our circumstances may change, but the Lord is still “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”2
I do not know what 2026 might hold - what New Things the Lord might do. And yes, that does scare me a bit. But I know the One who loves me and walks with me - come what may.
Until Next Time,
Glory to God whose powers working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.3
Jen
Bits and Pieces
Reading/Watching/Listening:
After hearing about these books in so many places, I have finally jumped into The Unselected Journals of Emma Lion - listening via audio. They have been a delightful companion to my weekly travels here and there and everywhere.
Taking Delight:
There is nothing quite like the burning of dried out Christmas trees at an Epiphany bonfire!
Thinking About:
The hope God offers us is this: he will keep close to us, even in darkness, in doubt, in fear and vulnerability. He does not promise to keep bad things from happening. He does not promise that night will not come, or that it will not be terrifying, or that we will immediately be tugged to shore.
He promises that we will not be left alone. He will keep watch with us in the night.
~ Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night4
Barry Webb, The Message of Isaiah, 175.
Exodus 34:6
Ephesians 3:20-21
Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night, 33.