Newness

This summer had a theme for me. "Let go of the past," said my experiences, "and..."
But I never heard the rest. I always stopped with letting go, because loss seemed to me to be quite enough to deal with. There was more, though, and a recent e-mail opened my eyes to it: In letting go of the old, we must take up something new. The other half of letting go of the past is taking hold of the future.
I think an illustration is best. In high school, I once took an outdoors trip to a high-ropes course. One of the obstacles of that course was to walk along a rope tied some 30 feet up in the air between two tree platforms (naturally, we had a safety line to prevent us from falling to our deaths, but it was still quite thrilling). Hanging from a higher rope (above the one we were to walk) were vertical ropes spaced out about a yard-or-so from each other. We were to use these vertical ropes to work our way across, in a semi-Spider-man "web-to-web" fashion. I went from the first to the second and the second to the third, but when I reached the third, I realized that the fourth rope was positioned a bit further than the others. I reached for it, but my arm fell short. As long as I clung to that rope behind me, I could not grasp the rope before me. So I risked the void: I let go of the third rope and went for the fourth. For a brief moment, I wasn't holding on to anything. But it would have been quite foolish to remain so. If I had not grasped that fourth rope, I would have fallen. Instead, I reached, I grasped, and I made it to the opposite platform.
So here I am at the end of my summer. My computer has, in a sense, been the symbol of loss for the summer. Well, I have just received it (and its memory) back in full. But some of the files remain corrupted and lost.
I am fine with that. They are gone, and that is that. But there is so much more ahead. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proposes in the opening chapters of The Lost World, "There are heroisms all around us, waiting to be done." And that is true. My fears, my failures, and my losses of the summer are behind me. My confidence, my courage, and my future lie ahead. It is time to go out and grab the fourth rope, and I know I can because I am not alone. My strength resides in one stronger than I, for as things are, Man needs God, and God is available (so that is quite fortunate for Man). "I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Phil 4:13). The strength is His, and Newness is His work. So yes, tomorrow I may meet those same fears of yesterday. But this has never stopped me before.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?"
--God (Isaiah 43:18-19)