Sometimes Good Things Have to Die So We Can Move On

A few weeks ago I heard a guest preacher talk about Moses death before the nation of Israel moved into the promised land. Moses and God went up onto the mountain, Moses died and God buried him. This is a departure from other leaders in the nation of Israel. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all buried in recognizable locations. The preacher said he thought God buried Moses in secret because otherwise the Israelites would have built a monument to Moses, rallied around it and probably never left the wilderness.

I think there are many times in our lives when even good things need to die and be buried so we can step forward into the next thing. Most of the generation who had left Egypt were dead. All the next generation had ever known was the desert. Now they were being asked to move on.

Many times in my married life, we’ve been forced to move on. My husband was working a dead end job as a customer service representative in a bank branch where he served an average of one customer a day. He was thinking about going back to school but he just couldn’t seem to motivate himself. I was already a full time student. One day he came home from work in the middle of the day and announced he had been laid off, but that his severance we would maintain our insurance and he would still get tuition reimbursement while he was receiving his severance. It was just shortly before the start of the semester, within a week he had a 10 hour a week part time job and was a full time college student. He knew he was probably going to continue his education at some point but he had been stalling about when and how. I’m grateful that God used circumstances to force the issue.

I had a long term temp job  I was pushing to be made permanent. It wasn’t the field I wanted, and nothing about the situation was great, I didn’t even really like the job. But we needed the paycheck so I did everything I could to excel at the job. After 11 months, two weeks, they let me go with no real explanation. Over the course of the next four months, through contacts with another temp agency, I ended up working for a small nonprofit.  I continued at that job until I left to have children and returned to freelance for them many times for the following six years. God had to bury that temp job that wasn’t really for me, to release me into the better thing he had planned.

I can only imagine that the death of Moses felt unsettling to many. He was the person who spoke to God and presented them with God’s law. He brought water from the rock in the desert. No doubt many had learned to rely on him instead of on God. The people’s reliance on Moses was not entirely bad, he was God’s appointed leader. He brought them out of bondage. But now God was raising up a new leader, Joshua.

There must have been people who questioned the change. Could Joshua really do the job? They might have been tempted to remain in the wilderness.  Many of them had no doubt forgotten that God had a better plan ahead, they were ready to settle for what they had grown used to. Rather than allow the nation to discuss and debate God handled the whole situation and gave them little choice.

I’m someone who likes to feel as though I have some control over my situation. But there are definitely times when I have been grateful when I didn’t have to make certain difficult choices. (My daughter’s recent diagnosis comes to mind.) When the decision is out of my hands, I am forced to trust God fully and move forward. While there are certainly times we must discern and pray for direction, decision fatigue has been a very real part of my life, especially in the last few years. Looking back, I can see clearly the times God used circumstances to direct me and for this I am truly thankful.