Letter #5:  To a Friend Who Is Preparing for Change

Dear Friend,

I hope this letter finds you well here in the peak of summer. I miss seeing and spending time with you in person, but I was so excited to share a few minutes over the phone recently. There is so much happening in our lives, and I’m especially encouraged to hear how you’re aware of God’s presence and the reality of the Gospel in your life and work.

We both have some big changes coming down the pike – in the next month, the next few seasons, and the coming year. You’re preparing to launch a new business, I’m preparing for a new season in my same organization, and we’re both preparing to welcome new children into our families… All blessed, joyful, and uncertain transitions.

I’ve been thinking about the unique challenge and opportunity of preparing for change since that call. So many changes come at us unexpectedly, and all we can do is hold onto each other and the promises of our God when those come. We see other shifts, like these, from miles away, providing plenty of time to save financially, finish projects, offload or adjust various duties, or have “one final celebration” before the beginning of a new challenge.

Recently, if I’m not careful, I’ve found myself thinking that if I just check all those boxes, prepare the domains of my life with wisdom, and delegate and collaborate with expertise, these moments will go smoothly. I think you can relate to this, too. And, we both agreed in our conversation that preparing in this way is prudent and loving toward our colleagues, spouses, and friends.

Yet, if I’m honest, preparing for predictable and uncertain changes makes me realize that I often prefer to trust in my abilities rather than trusting God.

Do we really trust that God is up to something in our lives and this world? And, if He is, do I believe that it is something good?

If you’re asking similar questions about your work, family, friendships, and all of the changes you are preparing for therein, I hope you’ll pause right here and remember that those questions in themselves are profound prayers to our God. As the Psalmist often asks, How Long? Where are You? or Why is __ Happening?, we also ought to draw near to God in these prayerful questions of our lives.

Keep asking God these questions as you finish projects, delegate unfinished work, cook dinner, mow the grass, and pay your bills.

I was reading Dan Marotta’s book about the Lord’s Prayer after we last spoke, and something he writes about Luke 11:2 hit me in a new light.

“He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, Hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom Come.”

I’ve got to admit, the first time I read this I realized how far away this was from the functional prayers I had been praying in preparing for these changes. Rather than Your Kingdom Come, I’ve been praying “help my Kingdom survive,” “hold all of my pieces together,” and “hallowed be the names of those who help me get through this.”

Looking down the line at transitions I can predict and those I can’t, praying “Your Kingdom Come” is both frightening and exciting to me. But more of the first.

I think I need to spend more time remembering the nature of our God and His Kingdom. I need to spend more time praying this prayer so that I remember the steadfast lovingkindness that characterizes all that our God is up to in the world. And I need to remember just how much the Triune God loves me, letting that love disarm my defensiveness, embolden my uncertainty, and comfort my hopes and fears.

Jesus doesn’t just love you and me in a theological sense. He really loves us. Just as we love our friends, families, good food and drink, and knocking those projects out of the park – Jesus, as one fully human, loves us.

It’s because of that love that He, although wrestling with His Father about a painful impending change coming down the pike in the Cross, proclaimed, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Because Jesus knows the infinite love of God that has no bounds or definition, he surrenders his desires, loosens his grip, and embraces a visceral, costly trust in God – in the face of great pain and loss.

It’s a great privilege that the changes we’re eyeing are far less painful than Christ’s and those of our brothers and sisters around the world, but faithfulness to Jesus is costly in all realms of our life, isn’t it? Because we have a God who, in Christ, embraced the cost of loving us with an endless love, we can also surrender our lives before him and pray “Your Kingdom Come,” trusting that this Kingdom comes with the same endless and unfailing love, subverting and renewing everything in its way.

For our good? Always. For His glory? Always. For our comfort? Not necessarily. With predictability? Rarely.

You aren’t alone. I am with you. But, what is more, Jesus is with us in the same place of wrestling with surrender in the face of change.

Keep preparing. Keep praying. I can’t wait to walk this road together and see what God is up to in, around, and through us.

I’m proud of you.

We are Together in Christ,

RH