There is no improving the future without disturbing the present.
-Catherine Booth

The lot across the street from my mother-in-law’s apartment building is a mess. A gaping whole exists where the bank used to be because, one dark night, the old empty Leamington  Mansions burned down. When she heard about about plans architects and engineers have to fill in that space with a higher, more modern luxury apartment and shopping complex she was worried about losing her view, but right now she has a view of a huge muddy hole surrounded by burned rubble.

I don’t always look forward to change, especially when it’s noisy and messy and disrupts my life, but if it weren’t for change we would still be living in powerless, cold, makeshift huts on dirt streets with knee-high horse droppings in the middle of the road.

Something is up. I feel it. Spiritual growth sometimes means building  and sometimes it means trusting God and letting go of the familiar. A lot of other people I talk to also feel a holy discontent with ways of thinking and doing that have, until recently, been perfectly good – or good enough. Letting go of the past before we have a firm grasp of the future is scary.

The Leamington Mansions building was charming, but empty. It sat next to a little branch bank building which couldn’t handle the high traffic of the downtown area of a major city. It looked more like it belonged in a suburban strip mall than on Jasper Avenue. It’s time for change.

I have had dreams of crowds of street people, of women and children, of First Nations people, of marginalized people leading the edge of a great wave of souls who discover freedom, forgiveness and joy in Christ. They won’t fit in the structures of the past.

What if there is more? What if God has bigger plans? Has he given you a view of the future? What do you need to let go of first?