After a little more than a year at my first job after college, I decided minimum wage and twelve-hour work days just wasn’t God’s calling on my life. So I packed up my belongings (which wasn’t much) and moved to another city to attend graduate school. A few years later, I would once again load up a U-Haul truck with my corkboard furniture, a futon, and my ambition to drive halfway across the country to another state. I knew not one soul. No friends. No family. Nothing but a job and an ambitious, crazy plan. I was an adventurous stranger in a foreign land.
Then life happens, plans get altered, that fire in your belly can flicker out, and the faith to follow through on a simple idea or an opportunity starts to wane. As more time passes, a list of excuses paves the way to the seductive comfort of the familiar. But, like a voice in your head you can’t ignore, there’s usually something tugging at your heart and your spirit, calling you to do something different, to try something new.
A new day is a new opportunity for new ideas whether they fail or succeed. Each day is a chance to try something new, learn something new, be someone new whether it works or falls flat. The same approach to the same problem usually results in the same outcome. But, a new approach to an old problem can reap the right results. Consider Abraham in the Book of Genesis when he’s instructed to pack up and leave the comfort of the familiar for the discomfort of the unknown. Trying something new requires a belief in oneself and faith in a plan much bigger than our own.
“All peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran.” (Genesis 12: 3- 4)
The takeaway here is it’s never too late to start anew. As cliché as it sounds, it’s true. What’s most important to appreciate is that the risks you take, the opportunity you seize, the chance you get, the step-out-on-faith you demonstrate could very well bless someone else. Acts of faith in alignment and in rhythm with the Creator can cause a ripple effect with the power of an earthquake. In fact, that new thing you’re about to do today is an aftershock or a gentle nudge from somebody else’s walk of faith. If they did it, you could do it. Go out there and be a blessing.
Be new!
