Wit and Wisdom: The Cost of a New Life

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to change? Strangely enough, even positive change is hard!

What’s interesting to me is to try and identify what the trigger(s) was that caused someone to answer the call to change. Here are some common triggers:

• The birth of a child might be a wakeup call
• Ironically, losing a job can be a call to change
• Being sick and tired of being sick and tired can cause people to change.
• New opportunities can beckon someone to change

What about you? Have you ever had a call to change?

• Maybe opportunity knocking on your door
• Or God knocking on the door of your heart
• A call that would require you to overhaul your life
• A realization that if something doesn't change, you are going to lose yourself

Sometimes the call to change involves:

• Leaving an abusive relationship
• Walking away from the devastation caused by a life of dependency on alcohol or other drugs
• Deserting the dead-end road of a life of crime
• Turning from an uninspired life
• Putting a vacancy sign on the doorknob of a purposeless life

Like a SPAM call on your cellphone, the call to change often shows up unexpectedly.

No doubt God's call to Abram (before his name was changed to Abraham) was as big a surprise as was the announcement decades later that he would be a father at the age of 100. God said to him, “Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you.”

Think about what it cost Abram to answer God’s call. He gave up his friends, left behind his family, all those things that were familiar to him—he walked away from it all.

In the field of addiction recovery there’s a phrase that’s often echoed, “If you're going to stay clean and sober you have to change people, places and things.” That’s exactly what God asked Abram to do.

As Elijah approached the end of his life, God sent him to find his successor. Elisha was the chosen one.

Elijah came to Elisha while he was plowing in his field. Elijah walked across the freshly plowed ground and made clear the purpose of his visit with Elisha. It was a call to follow; a call to apprentice with Elijah for the purpose of being his replacement when God took him home.

But it would require Elisha to make a hard perpendicular turn on his life's path. Everything about it would be unfamiliar. The journey would be filled with questions and unknowns.

When Elisha determined he would answer positively the call to change, he decided to make sure he wouldn’t be tempted to return to his old life. He slaughtered his oxen that he'd been plowing with and then burned the plow. He effectively closed the door behind him as he opened the door in front of him. It's an amazing demonstration of the cost of living a new life.

Peter and his brother Andrew, and James and his brother John had a successful fishing business. Working in the harsh elements of nature was their norm. Laboring with their hands was all they knew. But when they met Jesus and he called them to follow him “they pulled their boat up on shore, left everything and followed him.” What a bold move!

They didn't tie their boats to a pier so that could return to them just in case things didn't work out. They pulled them on shore, symbolically saying, “We're done with that old life.”

One of my abiding beliefs is that change is possible—for everyone!

If you’re in a place that you believe you need to escape, be bold. Step out on the gangplank of uncertainty and walk toward the unknown.

Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume III: A Harrowing Halloween Tale