Receiving ‘Reassignment’ Graciously

“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

— Maya Angelou

Having watched the motion picture The Impossible (2012) it is clear that life can change in an instant, and it often does; it sweeps us away on a furious torrent and the path of our destinies can be transformed where there is no going back.

It seems God has designs on our lives to the point where reassignment occurs and we either go along with it, nurturing the divine flow as it prevails through our lives, or we resist and suffer for it. The proactive instinct serves us well.

We sometimes never know when a good thing is over until it’s over.

Reassignment is one way of looking at the course of life as it twists and turns through the winding terrain we call worldly existence. Never can we assume that life will remain the way it is or has.

Floating On the Raft of Life To Reassignment

It’s not a passive comment to make, but if we consider ourselves floating over the course of our lives on a teeming river that was a tremulous feature of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, we pray for safety as we float, hopefully, from safety to safety.

The path of change is not always hazardous, but at times it can be, and sometimes the hazards are of our own making. We resist. We bite back at the call of God.

When the end has come on a season of life, particularly when it comes against the flow of our desires, our challenge is to receive our reassignment graciously.

What that reassignment is, is another question.

But we can be sure that the end has come not without reason, and our hope subsists in the idea that from one assignment we go on to another.

Succeeding assignments are often more the making of us, if we can let go of the precious condiments of the past assignment, enjoying what it was about it that gave us so much joy.

We hold onto this reality and it gives us hope: when remaining in a situation we are called from is more difficult than stepping into the new situation.

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Seasons of life end against our will. But to receive the new season, God’s reassignment, we will need to let go, whilst enjoying the pleasant memories of that season now gone. Now’s the time to celebrate that past. Truly, in our reassignment, the best is yet to come. It is God’s universal promise. What is our hope is also our joy.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.