Life Is One Big Transition Spread Over a Life Time
The felicities of life are often overlooked because of the business that many of us place on it. As I reflect back on a good life, it could the been better with the whole of it in focus and not just the immediate or near future. For example, eating properly, exercising regularly, spending more time with children would have made a difference in my life. But I was too busy to pay much attention to what I just mentioned unless, of course, I was overweight then there was a crash diet ( they never worked for long haul), or a family crisis with family issues (where Dad intervened). But after the crisis was over, I went back to the “grind”. I hope you get the point. In self-defense, I was heavy but not obese, I was a decent father but I could have been better and as a husband, I thought I was doing the correct thing by being the provider of means. Yet upon reflection found myself, at times, neglecting the deepening of a good marriage to make it even better.
And so here I am at 76 in a wonderful marriage. I am living with a bypass which saved my life, but maybe could have avoided it, if I had taken better care of myself. And, we will be moving to a retirement community in just a few weeks. (More about that later.) All of life is transitional, some natural, some I influenced and thank goodness, some God had given me. How I handled them made all the difference in my life, including my attitudes, my disposition, and even my relationship to God.
Life is full of transitions from point of our conception, through birth from our mother’s womb, and in all stages in life. Often those stages in life are at least temporarily managed by our situation in life made by decisions we or someone else made. So, when I was three, I contracted polio, but God healed me at the age of six. Soon after, I wanted to play football in the Tom Thumb league, but due to polio and the fact that I had no one to teach me (Dad was not around much) I was primarily a bench warmer. I could have gotten depressed, but something I heard early on: take what God has given you, let Him use the tough spots and go with it. It was a lesson that I sometimes let slide, but through most of my life, I had to put it into practice.
So in life, transitions come, and I ponder what do with them? I have a nephew who went to a university for about 2 weeks then returned home because it wasn’t for him. He sought out his bailiwick, and has become one of the very best heating and air professionals and the most in demand. I have a niece who, at a relatively young age, has risen to the position of a vice president in a bank. I went to school to be a teacher, and even got a Masters degree on a full scholarship. But that wasn’t for me. God clearly called me into the ministry but used what I learned in the previous transitions to fulfill that call. And even in the struggles within each transition, God used them to help me help others as they went through tough times. So I have to ask myself, what is it that God wants me to do now? My next transitions will be influenced by decisions, events, etc. made in previous transitions in my life: heart attack (future in question now more than ever), 76 years of age with aching muscles, arthritis, and at times slower wave speed between the brain synapses. Some might see that as “baggage” from the past or as I see them, tools for the future. It is another transition that has come in part, just with aging, but also in part due to decisions that I made years go when I did not take time to appreciate the reality of transitions I was living.
So how do I deal with this transition: Maybe the first word is “balance.” Though I am not as steady on my feet as I once was, the kind of balance I mean is assessing what is important and most meaningful. I can lament that I don ’t have the strength of a 30 year old or the wisdom of a sage, or mind of 50 year old man with experience. But what I have is God, who takes me, the good, bad and ugly, and makes my life transitions as a means to glorify Him, which is what calls all of us to do. The Westminster Confession has this line in it: "man's (humanity’s) chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever". So as soon as Becky and I arrive at the retirement community, our transition is to be the same transition that we had given to us since conception: to glorify God. And the confession adds: “and to enjoy Him forever.” That includes now and throughout all eternity because we are His.
A great hymn of faith states it clearly for me, as we focus clearly on Him and not on ourselves in these transitional stages in life:
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
be all else but naught to me, save that Thou art;
be Thou my best thought in the day and the night,
both waking and sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my wisdom, be Thou my true word,
be Thou ever with me, and I with Thee Lord;
be Thou my great Father, and I Thy true son;
be Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
be Thou my whole armor, be Thou my true might;
be Thou my soul's shelter, be Thou my strong tower:
O raise Thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise:
be Thou mine inheritance now and always;
be Thou and Thou only the first in my heart;
O Sovereign of Heaven, my treasure Thou art.
High King of Heaven, Thou Heaven's bright sun,
O grant me its joys after victory is won;
great Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be Thou my vision, O Ruler of all.
Over the years I have come to realize that He is my vision, and now in this transition, into an unknown territory of my life, when there are moments of struggle and challenges I must hold to His vision for me, if I am to be fully alive and able to carry on what He has called me to do. Joshua, Caleb and the Hebrew people trusted God as they prepared to enter the Promise Land but it took them 40 years of transitions to learn to do just that. Trust God as one transitions from one stage in life to another. And note this: the Promised Land was known as the “land of milk and honey”, but as soon as the Hebrew people walked in, they were in battles, had to start from scratch to build homes, towns, cities. They could do it as long as they kept their focus on God in the midst of their transitions.
God bless you in your transitions. With God, they will all be blessings, often realized later but blessings, no less in the present.
Quentin Scholtz
Sharecropper’s Inheritance,
Lent, 2025
Comments
Post a Comment