Embrace the finite. Writing the words in my journal, I was unsettled somewhat as I read them again. I love permanence. It’s not only the idea of having started, persevered, and completed something, but permanence is the assurance that something will remain consistent and unchanging.
For context, I had been taking some time to pray and think through a new stage my husband and I are in with our adult children. Not only are we past the days of high school graduation, but now both of our kids have completed their undergraduate work, and our oldest is set to finish law school in May.
While their visits home have become less frequent, given that they are building lives in the cities where they are completing their upper-level education, we could still count on seeing them for a few weeks during their long mid-semester break at the Christmas holiday. This year, however, will be the last of these long breaks.
Yet again, life is changing.
The Eternal and the Finite
As I sat in the quiet that morning, I knew that God wasn’t asking me to be less committed in living for a kingdom that doesn’t end (Matthew 6:19-20). Opening my arms to those things that wouldn’t stay the same wasn’t an exchange of the eternal for the temporary. It was a call to deepen my trust in an infinite God by accepting the finite reality of life here.
He was asking me to be even more committed to His plan, and less insistent upon my own.
The God of all eternity is at work in those very things that will not –and cannot—stay the same. This truth shows up in both small and monumental ways:
- The hours of any given day have an endpoint.
- My abilities have limits.
- Places, people, and experiences will not remain as they have been.
Seasons begin and seasons end. The truth, though, is that sometimes I don’t want things to change.
The Choice to Change
I remember several years ago when my husband and I had walked through a great deal of transition in several areas of our life: extended family, kids, ministry, our relationship. I felt as if nothing had remained untouched.
In that season of life, I learned that just because I had experienced a change of events didn’t mean I had made the appropriate changes in my heart and mind. Life around me had shifted, but my soul was still trying to catch up.
It was like facing the cold chill of autumn in shorts and flip flops. It left me feeling exposed and ill-prepared. I didn’t like feeling vulnerable, but in that place, I chose to believe God loved me, despite my confusion. Change is still hard for me, but these truths aren’t just words I know; they are a part of me.
- God does not leave us alone in the process. Our companion and comfort, the Holy Spirit remains present with every breath we take. He reminds us that Christ is not only near but that He has the wisdom we need for the unknown places we walk (John 16:7,13).
- God will change the ways in which He moves in our lives, but He remains unchanging. When nothing in life looks like it may have yesterday, God remains consistent and constant—always faithfully with us (Matthew 1:23). His love had kept me prior to these new changes. His love would not falter in keeping me through and beyond those changes.
- God determines the seasons, not us (Genesis 1:14, Hebrews 11:3). Because God is eternal, He is not bound by time, but He does choose to work within it. The days I live matter to Him, and He invites me to participate in what He is doing on this earth. That invitation, however much it assures me of an inheritance in heaven, does not make me a shareholder, especially not one with voting rights. God is sovereign, and it is He alone who establishes the purpose of my life (Isaiah 55:9-13).
My resistance won’t stop the season from changing. It will only serve to put me at odds
with the One who not only knows my days but loves me in them, forever and always.
Savor, Don’t Seize
Shortly after our daughter turned two, we bought a larger home to make room for our growing family. Enabling us to manage the move without a little one underfoot, my in-laws had kept Charis with them for the day. At the end of the day, when they met up with us at the now empty townhome, we took them all in for one last look around.
Tired from hauling boxes, our hearts were full of so many sweet memories in what had been our first family home, but we were ready for a new season.
Charis, however, was not.
No sooner had she walked in the front door, she took off running for the farthest room at the back of the house, grabbed onto the blinds, and refused to let go.
Then the tears began to flow.
I learned that day there is a significant difference between savoring and seizing.
Beautiful moments, even the best of seasons, are meant to be savored. We were made to enjoy God and be enjoyed by Him—and that includes the wonder of moments we find ourselves wishing would never end. Gratitude keeps us grounded.
Psalms 100:3 reminds us, “It is He who made us – and not we ourselves” (NKJV). And when the closing of a season comes, so that a new one might begin, anything more than savoring can easily become an attempt to seize control. Change, even welcome ones, stretch us, and some changes usher in a season of grieving. God does not ask us to bury our questions, fears or our tears.
He asks us to trust Him.
Only then with grateful hearts can we say, in the remembering and the letting go, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17, NKJV).
—Written by Regina Franklin. Used by permission from the author.
