c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ Saturday morning I lay on a wood floor, wrapped in a sleeping bag and two blankets. Our singing group, Shiloh, was on retreat at a log house beside the New River in western North Carolina.

Giving up a futile effort to escape the hard wood through sleep, I arose to a quiet house, found coffee of sorts, and settled in at the laptop computer for an hour of programming. As often happens in the early morning, a sense of peace washed over me.

In the dawn before breakfast, a fellow bass and I went for a walk along the New River. We talked about the new job that just opened up for him and the exciting new work in which I find myself engaged. We talked about old things that seem to be passing away.

In rehearsal, we worked hard on four new songs. Three have a driving beat, close harmonies, and powerful messages that carried us beyond pleasing sounds. We loosened up and dared to enter into the music. After the insistent refrain,”Here am I, send me,”an alto admitted she found the words frightening. Such newness would obliterate her settledness.

Back home, I found my 18-year-old son preparing to host his first big party. While its noises transformed our home with his newness, my wife and I stayed in our assigned back rooms and continued the process of sifting through piles of paper that remain from a difficult time of transition.

After deciding three years ago to chart a new course, newness didn’t come quickly or efficiently. I had false starts, ventures that didn’t pan out, obligations that I simply couldn’t fulfill. Each stage in this wilderness led to the next, and each stage mattered. We never build our lives on success alone. God’s faithfulness is especially manifest on cloudy days.

But the question continually arises: What do I carry forward? Ventures mean people, as well as sheets of paper and plans. People mean letters that weren’t always answered, commitments that went stray, complaints, questions, uncertainty about relationships.

I can’t tie a neat bow around the wilderness days and make a tidy, pleasing package of them. Lessons learned the hard way don’t suddenly become a soft couch. Hard wood is hard wood.

Jesus dealt more than once with this question of newness. Instead of defining the terms of victory _ who gets saved, who wins, who gets power in God’s new age, who is right _ I think Jesus focused on the cost of newness. If God is indeed making all things new _ and is doing so for reasons that have to do with his desires, and not ours _ then dealing with the cost of newness matters more than building a trophy case.

Let go of the wealth that ties you to this world, Jesus said. Let go of the weight which evil powers demand that you carry. Let go of the weight which your own sins pile upon you. Let go of old ways that no longer pertain. Let go of ancient laws and distinctions. Let go of hatreds. Let go even of people, and not just bad people.

God’s newness isn’t like buying a new car and figuring out how to pay for it. God’s newness is a wrenching disassociation from things that have mattered, even good things, even things that once gave life.”He is God not of the dead, but of the living,”said Jesus. I doubt that he said anything more offensive than those words. In the end, it was the custodians of death who killed him. Even his followers’ earnest questions _”Sir, will only a few be saved?”_ missed the point of newness.

In trying to scope out who gets the prizes of victory, we miss the infinitely larger point: that God is engaged in something that we don’t understand, can’t control, can’t define, can’t turn to our sole advantage.

We can only dig deep and say,”Here am I, send me, take me, lead me, melt me, mold me, change me.”We can only believe that, if we dare to awaken today to another journey across the unknown, God’s manna will be on the ground.

DEA END EHRICH