I’m home today, preparing for a retreat with Brianne to complete her initial orientation to REYWT and NNPCW. Okay, so maybe I haven’t been preparing too much yet—but I did take a GRE practice test this morning and did pretty well (please, everyone, note the time—I woke up at 6:30 am to do this before work). I have nicknamed the GRE the “grrrrr.” I think it is an apt description. Wednesday is my test date, so send some affirming and mathematical thoughts my way. Maybe they’ll stick in my brain when I take the test.

I’m going to kill two birds with one stone, and write this morning’s devotional activity here before doing it with Brianne. The passage I chose for devotion this morning is from a tried-and-true book the office owns, Women at the Well: Meditations on Healing and Wholeness, edited by Mary L. Mild. The title is “A New Beginning,” and it illustrates the topic using the Genesis passage on Noah's ark. The author points out that Noah didn’t step off the ark onto pristine land—it probably looked more like those images we saw from Florida last year after the hurricanes hit.

When we start out anew, the beginning isn’t necessarily fresh or clean. When I graduated from college, for example, I moved from Washington to take my current job. It did have that sense of a “fresh start” or a “new beginning”—I even bought a Ford Mustang as a symbol of my new life. But looking back, it wasn’t a break with the past. There were (and are) still old hurts to be dealt with in my life from other endings. There was the family I left behind, who still pines for me to return home. There was the risk of stepping out and not knowing what I would find in the inchoate mud of a new life.

But the author of this passage says that when I commit to something new, “I risk losing control; I give up attempting to control that which I do not want to face—the unknown. Instead, I rely on God, who knows my footsteps even before I step off the boat into the mud and a new beginning.” Life is a series of beginnings, endings, and new beginnings, until the final end. But we can step out of the ark, knowing that we walk in the shadow of the Holy Spirit.

If you’re so inclined, light a candle in your room (unless fire codes prevent this in your dorm!). Take out a sheet of paper now and express your uncertainties about the future on it (this can be in words, pictures, or whatever creative way you choose to express yourself). Then stick the paper in the flame, trusting that the fire leading you today is the same fire that led the children of Israel out of Egypt, the fire that led the apostles to boldly witness to the Gospel on the day of Pentecost.

As you end in prayer, remember that God’s steadfast love endures. Everything will be okay.

“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you.” --Genesis 9:9

Kelsey