Separation

With each passing day, we are separating little by little from our life here and moving toward our new adventure in Africa.  The pangs of separation come at random times.  Several Saturdays ago when we were driving to our house church, I suddenly felt a wave of sorrow in contemplating leaving our friends in what will seem like a few short months.  Sometimes at home, I feel twinges of sadness in thinking about selling our house, the home we have created and nurtured over the past 10 years.  The grieving process has begun and will perhaps magnify in some respects as we continue this separation.  Still an undercurrent of excitement flows through the sadness.  We are excited and yet humbled to pursue where God is taking us.

Separation often follows the calling.  I am reminded of the fishermen who laid down their nets and left everything to become disciples of the Master at His invitation.  Or Levi the tax collector, who, in the middle of his workday, immediately left his job when Jesus entreated, "Follow me."  (Incidentally, Levi then threw a party in Jesus' honor that landed Jesus in trouble with the Pharisees for eating and drinking with sinners.  Despite the brevity of his calling, Levi understood the Kingdom better than learned men who had pursued God their entire lives.)  Then there was the rich young ruler who could not leave everything as Jesus instructed to follow Him.  The embodiment of Love standing before him could not compel him in that moment to part with what he thought he had earned or acquired of his own making.  Yet he still went away sorrowful.

Jesus must have understood the pain of separation in following the call.  He left His Father and the glory and honor bestowed upon Him as the Son of God to dwell among us as a servant.  His closest friends whom He shared life with did not fully understand Him or the Kingdom He bore. When He became sin for us on the cross, He felt the full weight of separation, crying out- "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

Because He experientially understands separation, He treats our hearts gently and graciously as we learn to leave everything familiar, safe, and comfortable to follow Him.  Separation happens in stages, moment by moment and not all at once.  As we draw closer to His heart, He moves our hearts further from the things that do not bear the mark of eternity.  When we begin to know His heart, we learn what breaks it.  And our hearts become broken, too.  Subtly and not so suddenly, the insignificant trappings of our lives to which we once ascribed value and a place of honor become more easy to abandon.

These biblical examples of leaving everything to follow Jesus also remind me that if we are truly followers of Christ (not just wearing the Christian label), we should be willing to forsake all for God's glory, just as Christ did.  Despite our fears, justifications, rationalizations, and perhaps the criticisms of others.  In sending out the twelve apostles to the lost sheep of Israel, Jesus even told them that in following Him, sons would be separated from fathers and daughters from mothers.  (Matthew 10:35-36). 

Yet the promise in laying down all to follow is great.  Jesus said that "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."  (Matthew 10:39)  Despite the temporary pain of separation, His desire is that we would become whole through the process, that we would discover the lasting and abundant life that He longs for us to experience through Him.