Moving home

A couple of months ago, we were informed by our landlord that we would need to leave our home by the end of June.  It’s supposed to be a student house, but we were lucky enough to snag it last August for a family home.  I can only suppose he’s hoping to get more students in next year, with the increased revenue that comes from letting each room individually.

That really bummed me out.  I really like this place.

At the moment we are sharing it with two other friends, and some other good friends live just around the corner.  We have something of an ‘open door’ policy:  doing favours for each other, cooking meals and cleaning up, etc.  There isn’t any talk of lofty ideals about communal living or any of that.  Just us enjoying each other’s company and being there for each other.  For me that is something deeply spiritual, all the more so because of its simplicity.  It’s been good.

So here I am, faced with the prospect of packing up our belongings and finding a new place to put them down again, only this time with a 3-year old and a newborn.  Not cool.

What role does faith play in times of change and uncertainty?  The simple answer for a Christian, of course, is just Trust God.  Sounds good.  But what does it mean, really?  Just an emotional comfort during difficult times?  Nice, but not very helpful.  Does it mean that I expect that God will make sure everything turns out OK?  That only holds true if your definition of ‘OK’ is so big that it includes any good or bad outcome, which makes it pretty meaningless.

In my experience, faith doesn’t make a whole lot of practical difference.  Most Christians might say a quick prayer before going ahead and doing what they would have done anyway.  Sometimes they talk about being ‘at peace’ with a decision, something I’ve never given much credence to.

I think the advice to Trust God really means this:  Trust that God is working through the process.  ’The process’ means the chain of events that leads us to a place where we feel vulnerable.  Where our safety is outside of our control.  Where there are more unknowns than we’re comfortable with.  Trust that God is working:  not to ‘fix’ the situation, but to use it as part of a bigger story, as one thread in a giant tapestry.

As it happens, this isn’t the end of my story about moving house.  But I’ll pause here to ask, does that description of Trust God work for you?  Would you add or subtract anything from it?

to be continued…