"God Specializes in New Beginnings"

“God Specializes in New Beginnings”

This quote reassures us of God's redemptive purposes in our lives.  An immortal verse in the New Testament, Romans 8:28, says "We know all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose." We can face any adversity straightforwardly with confidence that God mysteriously creates new beginnings out of each tragedy, failure or adversity. 

I know an Ivy League graduate who was reared by his beloved paternal grandparents instead of his parents.  The latter couple was incapacitated significantly as it relates to sharing selfless and sacrificial love with their seven children.  The mother, under the ruse of running an errand to a convenience store to buy bread, eggs, meat, milk and cheese actually abandoned her seven children who ranged in age from ten years old to six months.  Inexplicably, she walked away from her family for a lover whom she spent following thirty-eight years with in a common law marriage.  The father, allegedly physically and emotionally abusive, was also drowning in alcoholism. Returning from work late that evening, he discovered his wife's abandonment of their marriage and children.  Unable to function as a single parent, he takes his children to his parents originally intending to return and re-establish his cohesive nuclear family.  His parents agree to rear his children, their grandchildren, out of their understanding of the Christian faith more than their blood relationship. 

Conventional wisdom assumes my colleague would have had a more preferable childhood had he and his siblings been reared by their parents.  However, when you look more closely at his prism of experience, you undoubtedly conclude that presupposition is wrong.  His paternal grandparents who had grade school educations instilled the invaluable worth of formal education within him and his siblings.  Of the seven of them, only one did not graduate from high school.  Three of them earned college degrees.  He has three masters degrees.  Two of his four degrees were earned at Ivy League schools.  Amazingly, he attained these educational milestones having been reared in a context of poverty, low ranked public schools and very low property values.  Would his personal and professional successes have been equal or greater had his parents reared him?  He resolves their fundamental character defects made them incapable of guiding him in attaining his lofty goals. 

As he reflects upon this truth, he realizes Almighty God's majestic handiwork.  A dual parental abandonment understandably would crush the soul and annihilate the dreams of anyone.  However, if God embeds seeds of providence and new beginnings within such a tragedy, then this hardship demonstrates God's faithfulness as he continually designs new beginnings at the juncture of human termination and trials. 

He uses two Christian senior citizens to prepare a future pastor, teacher of the Word of God, and counselor.  Interestingly, they were the couple best prepared to train and develop a future church leader.  In their early sixties having recently built a new house in which to wind down their lives as they enter their autumn years, this very devoted couple to Christ genuinely understood His love and became His chosen instruments to rear this future clergyman.  What began as a horrible episode in the life of a frightened toddler who was a few months away from his third birthday eventually became one of the very best occurrences in his life.  In retrospect, the hard facts of his life included parental abandonment, poverty, public housing, scarcity, and public assistance.  Providentially, God embeds authentic spirituality, grandparental wisdom, genuinely compassionate teachers and neighbors, supportive congregants, bold and courageous dreams and disciplined work ethic. Specializing in new beginnings, God mystically transforms this pastor’s most horrific experience into a gateway to commence his journey toward the life he imagined as a child.

Further, God uses two senior citizens with little formal education or professional standing to model the Christian life for this future leader in the Church.  Had his parents reared him, undoubtedly he would have been a statistic of some sort.  Rather than a Southern state where the tri-fold values of God, country and family are normative, the inner city public housing projects of the Northeast would have been the setting of his childhood.  There, the vicious and pernicious cycle of subpar education, public assistance, economically based racism, malnutrition and systemic poverty would have ground his dreams and hopes like beef before packaging.  As God specializes in new beginnings, the trip to his paternal grandparents home was the origins of his journey toward success and service.  In the colossal tragedy of dual parental abandonment, Almighty God sows the seeds of providence which mature into a whole new life for him. 

As God is not a respecter of persons, He will perform equal miracles in your life.  Writing to the Hebrew exiles of the Babylonian captivity, Isaiah shares this divine promise.  "Behold, I will do a new thing says the Lord!  Do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19) Regardless of how deep the night appears, press forward to a new dawn.  The appearance of the sun on the horizon of a new day symbolizes God uncanny ability to create something new and priceless out of your past. 

“Every exit is an entrance.”  As train riders leave their seats and walk onto the terminal’s platform, they actually begin a new journey at the point of termination.  This image drawn from daily commuting parallels life’s personal and spiritual journey.  As “pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress,” Almighty God hides new beginnings within the rubble of storms, defeat and failure; transforming an ending into a new beginning.