A Time To Move On

Sometimes reminders to grow come as a gentle nudge. Other times they smack you upside the head.

It’s sort of the same way that God sometimes speaks to you in a still small voice and other times He uses a trumpet blast.

This past weekend the Rabbi in my Messianic church gave a message about keeping your eyes on the end goal; on what the “song-writer” of your life has planned for you. The part of this message that really stood out to me is what he said about moving on from grief. He started by reading this verse:

Yahweh said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided a king for myself among his sons.” (1 Sam. 16:1, WEB)

Because of Saul’s disobedience and pride, God rejected him and moved on to the next step in His plan. He gave the prophet Samuel time to grieve Saul, since there is “a time to mourn” (Ecc. 3:4), but now God expected him to move on. Similarly, in our lives, there is a season to mourn when something bad happens. However, we’re not meant to stay there.

I was already thinking about my breakup that happened 4 months ago when the rabbi started talking about this subject, and then he specifically used a relationship ending as an example. So when he said, “There are a few people here who really need to hear this message” I felt like I was definitely one of them.

How long will you keep grieving over something that is past and can’t be fixed or recovered? he asked. We need to look to the end, trusting God has better plans and a new season waiting for us. There are times when our situations have to come to a point where things look dead before God can raise up something else that will produce fruit. And all of this ties-in to my own blog post from Saturday, “Are You Growing Or Shrinking?”

I’m starting to feel like God’s trying to get my attention.

Then on Sunday, my favorite online yoga teacher released a video called Yoga for Gardeners. About halfway through the video during a breathing exercise she talked about “shedding anything that’s not serving us; letting go of anything that we just don’t need anymore so that we have the energy, and the time, and the space — but really the right mindset — to plant new seeds to allow new things to come in.”

• For those of you questioning why I’d practice yoga, check out my blog post “Yoga, Meditation, and Christianity”

Yup. I think He’s definitely trying to tell me it’s time to move on into new and better things.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is something I’ve read dozens of times. Right now, though, it feels even more meaningful than it has before. I love the concept of time as something that has an ebb and flow with changing, repeating seasons as we move forward. The times of weeping, mourning, casting away, losing, and tearing will give way to times of laughter, dancing, gathering together, seeking, and repairing torn things. There’s a time to learn from and grieve the past, and there’s a time to move on with your life.

I’m not sure yet exactly what “moving on” will look like for me. Maybe it’s finally finishing the second edition of The INFJ Handbook. Maybe it’s going to grad school for a Master’s degree so I can teach. Maybe it’s being open to a new relationship rather than panicking and sabotaging things in an effort to avoid another heartbreak. Or maybe it’s all of the above. I guess we’ll see.

How about you, my dear readers? Are any of you in a season that you’re ready (or maybe should be ready) to move on from? Perhaps we can do that together.