Endings and Beginnings

Today is July 22, 2009. One year ago today, the curtain fell on all that I knew, on all that was familiar, on everything I held dear. As I have navigated through the past couple of days of first anniversaries of this and that, I marvel at the irony that surrounds them.

One year ago, I went into the office for the very last time. Yesterday, I went into the office for the very first time. One year ago, I led worship for the last time on a stage I had played on for years. Last week, I led worship from a new stage in a first of many to come. One year ago, I said goodbye to what I thought was the best I could have. Now, I am saying hello to a destiny I could never have imagined, but was absolutely created to experience.

One year ago, in the debris of all the fall out, I lost a prominent relationship with someone I thought I could trust, someone who was supposed to help walk me through this, a relationship I thought was gone forever. Three days ago, I received an email reaching out to reconnect.

As I look at all the endings represented by this one year anniversary, I cannot miss the irony of all of the new beginnings that coincide with this day. God is a God of restoration, but I never could have imagined that it would look like this.

I am reminded of that famous opening scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Indiana Jones removes the golden statue and replaces it with a sandbag in hopes of faking out the weight sensors under the place on which it was sitting. Didn't work out too well for Indy, but the vision of him simultaneously removing one while replacing it with the other is what I see God doing with my life right now. In my case, however, He is removing the worthless sandbag and replacing it with pure gold.
Here I stand at the end of what has been an incredibly painful, traumatic, devastating year, even as a bright, new, fulfilling future has already begun to unfold. God is so good.