“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” (Genesis 50:20, NASB)
I should have learned it from golf because that was my first sport, but this is an insight I owe to aerobics—you know, those exercise classes designed to make your heart beat faster, with pumping music and mirrors and buff young men and fit young women in spandex doing leg kicks and fist punches with hair flying and sweat dripping. See, your heart is beating faster already.
But I didn’t take aerobics for either of the reasons a lot of men did. I enrolled because I was the general manager of the club and I needed to understand it better. And I jumped right in to an intermediate class because, after all, how hard could it be?
As it turned out, I couldn’t keep up. My fitness level was fine, but I fell behind every time we switched from one set of moves to the next set of moves. That’s when it hit me: a lot of life is about how you handle the transitions.
This is certainly true in golf, and in more ways than you might think. There is the transition from addressing the ball to starting your backswing, and there is the critical transition from the top of the backswing to the beginning of the downswing. Work on those and your game will be better, guaranteed. But there is also the transition from home or work to the golf course. What happens to your mind along the way? Then there is the transition from the driving range to the first tee. How do so many of us lose our swings in that short distance?
In life we have small transitions and big ones, like getting engaged or selling a house or having a loved one go off to war. Once it is all in place we do pretty well, but how do we handle the transition? How do we jump across the chasm from normal to the new normal?
The full answer to that is longer than we have space for, but a very important part is this: realize that the transition is part of God’s plan for God’s glory and the good of his people. It is a bridge to a place you need to be, not a black hole from which you will not emerge. Just ask Paul, who was blind for three days at the beginning of his most important transition (Acts 9:1-9). Just ask Abraham (Abram), who at 75 left his home without knowing where he was going because God said a transition needed to happen (Genesis 12:1-3).
Just ask Joseph, who endured much and ultimately gave voice to his understanding that God, all along, in every transition, was in control. When Joseph was thrown in a pit by his brothers he had no idea where the transition would lead. When he was falsely accused and thrown in jail, he knew it was a transition and not a destination, although he was there more than two years. And when he came to power, he knew without question that God had guided him to that place through a most challenging path with difficult transitions.
And he knew that God meant it all for good.
—
Lewis Greer
October 3, 2013
Copyright 2013 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.