In an edition of The Robcast, a podcast by Rob Bell, he
highlights the enormous meaning of Abram leaving his homeland at God’s
direction. In Abram’s time, people did not leave their homeland. They stayed in
the same place for generations; it was what was known to them. God’s request
meant Abram doing something entirely new and unknown, and Abram said yes. In
order to do this new thing that led to what we now know as a covenant with God
and the dawn of a new religion, Abram had to leave behind the known. He had to
let something end in order for something new to begin. All he had to go on was
his trust in God.
I was recently reflecting with my colleagues on the meaning
of my baptism. As a Baptist then, I answered my own call to baptism, and the
words I heard at age 8 still carry powerful meaning: “Buried with Christ in
baptism, raised to walk in the newness of life.” I have had many deaths and
resurrections since then…things that have come to an end so that something new
can begin, and parts of myself that have had to die so that I could become who
I needed to be. A prayer never far from my thoughts is the Prayer of St.
Francis, which ends “it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” In order
to get closer to our true nature, our best self, our Christ-self, we are
constantly evolving. It requires a letting go of what is known, a dying away of
what no longer serves us. This is where new life begins.
As you enter into this time of harvest, reflect on what it
is in your life that might need to be left behind. Trust in God to take you
into the new territory of what is to become.
- Rev. Lee Anderson, Trinity's Minister of Care
