Gn 12:1-4 / 2 Tm 1:8-10 / Mt 17:1-9
A young man from a prominent family was being divorced by his glamorous wife. His lawyer called with news about the property settlement. "The good news is that she isn't asking for any share of your future inheritance."
"Great!" said the young man. "What's the bad news?"
"Well," said the lawyer, "after the divorce, she's marrying your father!"
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Oh, that sinking feeling! Old Abraham — in Sunday's first reading — must have felt something like that when God called him. At the age of 75, he was told to pack up his family and leave the only home he'd ever known. "I'm going to take you to a great new place," God told him, "but I'm not going to tell where."
Terrific! Nothing like not being able to see where you're going! But isn't most of life like that? Time after time life thrusts us into a new place where we haven't been before — with no map and no owner's manual.
We say to ourselves: But I haven't been a first grader before, or a teenager before! I haven't been married or divorced before, or a priest or the pope before! I haven't been old before, or retired or an empty-nester before! I haven't had a heart attack before! On and on it goes. All new, and all true. And somehow we know we can never go back to where we were before.
Eventually, at each stage of life, a familiar door closes and another door opens, and behind it lies a new place whose shape we can barely see, with new tasks we can only guess at. Will we be happy there? Will we succeed there, and accomplish our necessary tasks there? Will we be ready when the next door opens? Perhaps.
Will we instead spend our days longing to be let back in the rooms we've left behind — rooms whose doors are locked to us forever? Perhaps, and what a waste if we do.
It all depends on who is with us when the door opens. If we are entirely alone, one more door will be one too many, and we'll just fold. But if we've taken the Lord's hand and have the habit of walking with Him at our side, a new door can hold no terror for us. It holds instead the promise of something more, something we need to complete our journey and make our way all the way home.
If we have taken the Lord's hand firmly, we'll walk into those new places with confidence, even when it is dark there. We'll go forward like Abraham, not looking back. And, as the Bible says of Abraham, more and more we'll become a blessing for the people around us.
So let us step forward with confidence, and begin the next stage of our journey, and never, never look back. We have no reason to look back, because the Lord is with us here, and the best of life is still in front of us!
