Behold, I make all things new

At her birthday party last week, my goddaughter said, “Just as I had almost figured out how to be 18, now I’m 19.” I don’t know about you, but I have that experience all the time. To be a human being is to be in nearly perpetual transition. Just when we’ve almost figured out how to live one way, something comes along to upend our situation.
Seminary of the Southwest is, like all the people who are a part of it, a community in nearly perpetual transition. Just when we’re almost finished with the joy/grief/anxiety of sending away our most recent graduates, it’s time to welcome our new class of incoming students who will inevitably challenge and enrich our community in ways we can’t even yet imagine.

To mark that transition, we celebrated our annual Matriculation Evensong last Sunday night. Amid the colorful array of faculty robes with new and returning students and families dressed up for a party, we installed two members of the faculty and matriculated 43 students into our various programs. As the students signed the matriculation book, accepting the invitation to join us, the continuing community pledged “to support and encourage these new members of our community.”
That’s the way it has always been in the Communion of Saints. We who remain draw inspiration from the memory of those who have gone before, and pledge to support and encourage those who follow us. We do this always with the help of the Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth. It’s the circle of life, and also the circle of faith.
A few years ago, as the academic year was wrapping up, a student said to me, “You know, in the Fall there will be a bunch of new students here in the Chapel, and we don’t even know who they are yet.” I replied, “Yes, and the year after that, there will be even more, and they don’t even know who they are yet.” But I have faith that God does, that God is providing for our community in ways too wonderful to reveal.
Yes, transitions are hard. They are often made of that kind of gritty wonderfulness that the writer Glennon Melton calls “brutiful.” But in it all we are guided and comforted by our God who reminds us, even as the things we had understood and come to love are passing away, “Behold, I make all things new.”
What transitions are you undergoing right now?
What strength can you draw from those you know who have done this before?
How can you encourage someone who is just now taking on a transition that you’ve already made?
Micah Jackson (@Micah_SSW) is the Bishop John Hines Associate Professor of Preaching at Seminary of the Southwest. Micah’s interests include homiletic form, the spiritual discipline of preaching, and the postmodern relationship between the preacher and the congregation.