Transitional seasons are often filled with the unexpected. We had come to know what to expect in the “before”, and one day things will settle into some kind of “after”. But in the meantime, lots of things feel as though they are in upheaval. Unpredictable. Our old rhythms no longer “fit” with the season we are in/entering, and we have to feel around a bit to discover what is life-giving in this new space. Sure, God is up to something new (“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19) but what even *is* it? And how do we live into it?? These questions must have been under some of the disciples’ experience of those days after Easter, too. “What does it look like to live in a world where people come back alive after dying? What are we even supposed to be doing??” Sometimes, things feel so uncomfortably unpredictable that we find ways to give us *some* sort of certainty, and go back to the places we are transitioning out of (like some of Jesus’ friends did with fishing—“at least we KNOW this”—when everything felt so up in the air. As spring transitions to summer, or perhaps in a particular transition in your own life, what are you seeing around you that is unexpected? Where are you being surprised? And how do you tend to respond to this “unexpected” nature of transitional seasons (even when they may have been deeply desired changes… or not)? What might you be invited into here, right here, in the between?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-05-12 14:38:18 UTC