September, it seems, often brings even more of a ‘fresh start’ feel than the beginning of a new calendar year.
We love the sense of new possibilities, new resolutions and new challenges. Aware of things not accomplished in the year that is past, it’s exciting to consider how we might tackle those challenges in new ways. We love anticipating the new things God will lead us into and the new opportunities God will provide.
Unless, of course, we are feeling stuck. Unless the overriding sense is not excitement at new possibilities, but the presence of a rut and us being in it. So that, whatever we do, we can’t seem to climb out of it. That ‘stuck in a rut’ feeling gives to September (or January, or just about every day) a very different kind of experience.
All of us will know some measure of this. It could be work-related. A job that has become dull and routine – with no prospect of promotion and no alternatives in sight. Or a significant relationship with unhappy dynamics which don’t seem to change whatsoever we do. Or a ministry responsibility that we long to pass on, but which no one else is volunteering to take so that we are landed with it for the foreseeable. Or an illness or disability which hampers our activity levels and has no end in sight.
It’s hard feeling stuck in a rut. Not least because of the sense of what we could achieve if only we were ‘up there’ instead of ‘down here’. Of course, a desire to change things isn’t wrong. God’s unfolding plan in Scripture is bound up with transformation and change. What’s more, in some situations change is needed as a matter of urgency because the threat of harm demands it.
Blind to things God wants from us
Yet sometimes, the experience of feeling stuck in a rut and our despair at the lack of change can blind us to the very things God most wants from us.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul addresses himself to a range of different relationship contexts. He has a word for those unhappily single, and those unhappily married. Some of his instructions are stated as absolute commands; others allow considerable flexibility. Verse 17, however, provides this overarching perspective: ‘Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as the Lord has called them.’
Paul understands the danger of longing to be somewhere else. He knows that if all our energy is given to the pursuit of a change in circumstances, we’ll never focus properly on the pursuit of godliness where we are.
The circumstances of our life (even, verse 21, something as extreme as slavery) don’t force us into ungodliness. And while Paul certainly doesn’t forbid change – if you can gain your freedom, do so (v.21) – he wants us to see how preoccupation with change can get in the way of godliness. We become so consumed by a desire to get out of our rut, we lose sight of ways we can live for God while within it.
Years go by and we remain consumed with this need to change our circumstances. Emotional energies are used up with persistent feelings of frustration and resentment. A sense of injustice – toward God and toward others – dominates our waking hours. How can such things change? According to Paul we find our way forward through a robust sense of the sovereignty of God, which leads us to accept the ‘situation the Lord has assigned’ to us (1 Cor. 7:17) and begins to ask not ‘how can I get out of this rut’, but what would it look like to live for the glory of God in the situation in which He has, for the present time, placed me. And the funny thing is just how often, when we do that, the rut stops looking quite so rut-like.
