Real change of mind and heart comes hard for most of us. We tend to cling to ideas that make no sense, and we often do so with closed eyed determination. We hold onto habits and ways of doing things that we see are not working. Year after year, we trudge along in familiar ruts, though we know from past experience we don’t want to go where these old trails - that hard wiring in our lives - are leading. Why is there such a reluctance to change in most of us? Why this dread of letting go of habits and attitudes, ideas and relationships that are not serving us or anybody else? Why the self-imposed blindness? What is the fear? It’s pretty basic, really. To change means to let go of something we have in the hope of getting something better.
The problem in letting go is that we don’t have that something better in hand yet - indeed we may not even be able to see its shape yet. We are making a leap, like the man on the flying trapeze. And that means that, at least for a little while, we are likely to be empty-handed.
The big fear, of course, is THAT we’ll end up empty-handed, having let go of what we had with nothing of value to take its place. Now that is a good-sized fear! It’s that kind of fear that keeps battered women in ugly marriages, and keeps legions of talented people in the wrong jobs. It’s the fear that can keep us stuck in habits of thinking or praying, relating or living that just don’t work, that haven’t worked for a long time, and maybe never did.
In God’s word today, the Lord is calling us out of the darkness that our fear has made. We are urged to break free of whatever we are clinging to that is trapping or enslaving us or shrinking our lives to midget size.
“I offer you a wonderful life now, as well as later - says the Lord - but if you want that wonderful life, you are going to have to re-form and re-shape your life. You are going to have to change....a lot.”
The Lord knows the fears we are bound to feel when we hear that kind of challenge, and therefore assures us we won’t be traveling alone.
Instead of saying, “I’ll see you when you’ve got this taken care of.”
It’s “Come with me. As you let go of those chains that you’ve been clinging to, I’ll be at your side. And as you set out on a new path, groping for your next step, I’ll be there. And I’ll give you the light you need to find your way, and the strength you need to keep going and to keep searching. You have my word.”
Let us take the Lord literally and let go of the chains our fears have made, and begin to walk the new paths before us. And let us being that good work - today.