GUEST POST FROM NICK STEPHENS

"Letting go"

This guest post is from a friend, Nick Francis Stephens, a good friend and chief cultural architect of a new kind of church called Mosaic Lancaster.

 

I was walking through a local park the other day enjoying the preseason temperature highs and I peered up into the still barren trees.  I swear, if they could utter a sound, it was as if you could hear them longing to be fully clothed again.  Just then I spotted one tree specifically.  

It stuck out not because it was bear but rather because it was scarcely dressed, only it wasn’t new foliage covering the naked limbs it was the leaves of the autumn passed.

I find it interesting that during the shifting winds of autumn none of us find it odd to watch the leaves drop. We recognize that it isn't unordinary as the upcoming winter approaches, yet during the spring months you have to agree, it's quite inappropriate.
 
I wonder how many of us find ourselves unable to embrace a new season, desperately clinging on to things of our past.  Perhaps we are clinging because of fear, or past hurt, just unable to let go. Even though we find ourselves paralyzed, embarrassed by our naked souls, we exert more energy trying to hold on to that which will never cover us or bring back our full glory.

Yet still others of us are actually held in the same dilemma out of the good things in our past.  We live day after day trying to re-create old memories, yet with an outcome that only leaves us more and more empty.

 Afraid that we will never find wholeness again, we refuse to adventure into a new season with an anticipation of wholeness and regeneration.

Don’t be afraid of a new season.  We all have to face winters in our life but if we are not willing to let the seasons pass, we are destined to live cold empty lives.  I know that you will be pleasantly encouraged to know a new season of life, joy and faith awaits you.  It’s ok to let go.  It’s really the only thing that we can do if we dare to live and love again.