Day 29 - Can't Stay Here.

One thing is for certain...... we can't stay here. 

As I am waiting here, a little sentence from the end of chapter 14 of John's gospel comes to mind. Jesus says, "Let's get up and go from here now."

Last Friday we had a fun time playing a concert in a beautiful church near Redditch and we played an arrangement of a lovely song by Patsy Burton, 'Arise, my love.' The words are from the book in the Bible called the 'Song of Songs' or the 'Song of Solomon' and they are the words of the man to his beloved, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 

The flowers appear on the earth and the time of singing has come."

Time marches on and life keeps changing, rather like the clouds on a windy day. But sometimes we need a nudge to move on before circumstances force us to change. As a student, I lived in a lovely big Victorian house with six other students and when I got my first job after my course had finished, I stayed on, living in the house. Only a couple of months down the line we had a massive house fire, and although none of us was hurt, we all had to find alternative accommodation. This led to a set of circumstances that brought me and my husband together. It was time for me to move on.

Maybe it's time for you to move on. Maybe you've been in that job you hate for long enough and it's time to take a step of faith and  hand in your notice. Maybe you're in an abusive relationship and it's time to acknowledge that you need to walk away from it. Like the beloved in the scripture above, there are better things on the horizon and it's time to move. Maybe you're so comfortable where you are, that so much that could be, or so much that you could become, might be lost  because you're too scared to accept change.

However, not all change is easy. When Jesus said, "OK, it's time to move from here," he was walking further towards his capture and ultimate death at the hands of the Romans. In the 23rd psalm it says, 'If I walk through the valley of the shadow (of death) I will fear no evil for you will be with me, your shepherd's rod and staff will comfort me.' Wherever life takes us, we know we're never alone, and we're only passing through!.... at some point we'll reach the end of the valley!. I'll leave you with some words from one of the Narnia books by C.S.Lewis (sorry, I can't remember exactly where!):

'Arise and let us go and take the adventure that Aslan sends us!'