Release Point

It hardly seems possible. June. Here. And there was so much I was going to get done in the early part of spring!
But, zoOOom! It’s gone.
Of course, with the weather being what it was, it hardly seems as if there really was a spring. As I blog this that seems to have changed for the better at any rate; perhaps winter really has released its grip.
This June is particularly poignant for our family because it marks a major change in our lives. Our youngest is graduating from High School and our household is returning to one location. For the past 5 years my wife and kids have been spending the school and work week 2 and a half hours west of here. It was the only school the kids had known (we’d lived there for 13 years) and Sandy (my wife) has a thriving massage therapy business there. They’d come home for weekends and holidays, including summer, and I’d go there (to Pelican Rapids) for sports events and school events and stuff. With Hannah graduating that will stop, and that is a good thing to release.
But it is bitter-sweet because it also puts us on the edge of the “empty nest.”
There was so much I was going to do before that time came….
Through the mist in my eyes, it is hard to see where the time flew, and we are faced with letting go and releasing our hold more fully into God’s hands. We face a release point.
The life of faith calls us to very similar “release points” all the time. It might not be as big as letting kids go, or watching parents return to their Creator, or feeling our own physical bodies decline. But time and time again God calls us to release our cares, release our lives, release our love, release our grip, so that God can do what God would do. So that we and those we love will bathe fully in the blessings God would rain (reign) upon us.
Time and time again God calls us to release our anger, our pain, our grudges, our worries, our frustrations.
God calls us to release our joys and plans and hopes and celebrations and hearts and souls.
When we do it, God’s care flows more fully, God’s healing comes more completely, God’s Spirit guides more deeply.
And I want that, really I do. But at the moment just before the release there is an ache, a hesitation, a “holding back.” Part of my heart longs to hold on: sometimes in the name of human love; sometimes in the name human pride; sometimes in my own sinful stubbornness.
But the Spirit gently tugs and the world turns and the release point comes. And in trust, I open my hands, my heart, my soul, and God takes hold. Really. I will.
On the journey with you,
Pastor Chris