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In some personal news - I moved earlier this summer!
Not a big move - just a neighborhood over, actually. But a move is a move (as my protesting muscles reminded me!) The new house is smaller, just the right size for the pets and me, and for the boys when they come to visit. In almost every practical way, it's a better fit.
And yet.
There's something about leaving a home that goes beyond the physical. Homes aren't just structures — they house memories. They have a spirit about them. You round a corner and there's the spot where something important happened, the window where the light fell just right on a particular morning. Saying goodbye to a home means saying goodbye to a version of yourself who lived there. That's not nothing.
But here's what I keep coming back to: sometimes we have to say goodbye in order to say hello. Hello to the new thing God is calling us to. This is very much an act of faith.
I think of Abraham and Sarah, who packed up everything familiar and set out for a place they hadn't even seen yet, simply because God said go. They didn't leave because things were bad. They left because God had something new in store.
Or the disciples, who left their nets on the shore. Not because fishing was wrong, or because those nets didn't represent years of their lives. But because something new was calling, and you can't fully embrace what's ahead when your hands are still gripping what's behind.
I suspect many of you know this kind of move intimately — the shift in vision, the change in direction, the sense that God is calling your community somewhere new. And with that comes the same hard question I found myself sitting with during the moving process: what do we hold onto, and what do we let go?
Some things are worth carrying into the next chapter — the faith of those who came before, the relationships that have shaped us, the core of who we are as a community. But some things — patterns, programs, assumptions about how church is supposed to work — may need to stay behind. Not because they were bad, but because they belong to a season that’s reached its natural end.
Saying goodbye is hard. But sometimes it's the most faithful way to say hello.
So what is God calling your community to let go of? And what is God inviting you to step into? If those questions are stirring something for you, I'd love to hear about it.
Until then, blessings to you!
Live in hope,
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