Familiar to Foreign

I was thinking of a line in my last post today, 'living in the familiar so foreign, longing for the foreign which has become familiar.'

 I was thinking of it today while walking through the public library, rows of books assaulting my senses, same friendly faces smiling at me from behind the checkout desk.

I was thinking of it while driving home in the evening, still, icy pools of spring runoff water reflecting the pink and blue hues of the northern sky, reflecting perfectly the naked, spindly arms of barren trees stretching hopeful high to spring's pale sun, a photographer's dream.

i was thinking of it while watching the sun set, like always, throwing pink and orange tendrils over the river as it snakes its way across northern swampy woodland.

Everything so familiar, the same as it's always been, and yet, myself, different, entering in, senses heightened somehow, more aware, and different.

I feel most days, as walking through a dream, responding to situations with a mind moulded, changed by my time away, by a perspective of life, different. Some of the awareness, no doubt, present with age, but I have been changed by life, by moments of staring at myself with sudden startling clarity, seeing my reflection as staring in a mirror, having to decide if I will choose to stay in the familiar or if I will branch into the foreign. Having to decide if I will stay the same, or if I will....CHANGE.....

And as I was thinking of this awareness that seems to permeate every cell of my body, I began to think of our spiritual lives, 1 Corinthians 13 speaks of 'looking into a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.' The verse before speaks of growing into a man, putting aside the need for childish things. Hebrews speaks of growing from milk to solid food as a Christian. 

all this talk of change makes me wonder why so often we cling to the familiar, as if letting go of it will result in some tragedy. I wonder this because as I've left home and grown older and spent time away that changed me, I have come to love home in a greater way, I've come to appreciate the icy stillness of spring evenings. I've come to appreciate the friendly faces behind the check-out counter as people, as friends. I've come to love sunsets over swampy woodland. 

But in Christianity we tend to shy from anything different, scared that change will destroy our worlds. I want to propose that not all change is bad, sometimes a different way of looking at things actually deepens our faith, moves us into a heightened awareness of what God wants from us, brings us, simply deeper, more aware of who God is and how He works in our lives. Change doesn't destroy us, it just expands us.

At first it feels foreign, but as we live in it, it becomes familiar, feels right. We appreciate the old so much more, as we understand it more fully, but we can never go back to existing in it, to cut off our new awareness would be a kind of death, and so we move forward, with change. Because God never required that we become stagnant. He required life.