This week has been crazy for our family! After uprooting our girls 15 months ago and moving them from the only home they had ever known, their world was once again shaken at the news that we will be moving again. Their immediate focus was on everything they are going to lose, all they will be leaving behind – friends, schools, youth group, community, church, teams, etc. It has been a week of grieving what they have come to love and the plans they had made for their future.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the book Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud with no expectation that we were about to face a big ending. The concepts in the book are based on the foundational idea that endings are a normal and necessary part of life. Jobs, friendships, people, places, projects, programs, interests – all serve a purpose for a season in our life and it is a natural for something that was once “the new” to eventually become “the old.”

Paul refers to necessary endings in Colossians 3 – we are ALIVE IN CHRIST because we DIED WITH CHRIST and then were RAISED WITH CHRIST to a new life (3:1). It is necessary for us to die to the old life in order for us to find our real life, which is hidden with Christ in God (3:3). Letting go of our old life could mean putting to death some old sinful habits (Paul has a whole list of examples in 3:5-9) or releasing control of our lives and the plans we had made in order to follow God’s plan.

This real life takes form as we get to know our Creator and become like him. We are renewed and given a new nature, but we must also let go of the old in order to fully experience the new. In this new life, Christ is all that matters – we must focus on him and his plan for our lives, putting aside our own plans and desires.

This is consistent with what we have been studying all week in Colossians.
And now, just as you have accepted Christ Jesus as Lord, you must continue to follow HIM. Let your roots grow down into HIM, and let your lives be built on HIM. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness (2:6-7).

As Paul said in Colossians 3:11b: “Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.” And there is no necessary ending to the fact that God will never change. Even when we are surrounded by changes in life or experiencing changes in our own hearts, He is consistent and He is faithful. We can trust Him through life’s necessary endings.