Today I was looking through some old computer files and I found this. Apparently, I had imagined it was the first of many. It is the only one I found. I’m not certain when it was written. I think it is about two years old. Maybe there will be more “messages” throughout Year 49.
Messages from God to a Stage Manager
Lesson #1
Transitions Make the Play
I thought I was alone in the world when I found myself at 45 years old being fired from the career that had confirmed for me that I had indeed followed God’s will in my life. For years, I had wondered how a life in the theatrical world and life in the Christian Church world could co-exist. For years, I thought they needed to remain separate — separate friends, separate buildings, separate calendars. But, God continued to call in the way that God does. God can be such a pain in the butt. So, I found myself doing exactly what I was called to do — a marrying of the two worlds that no longer needed to remain separate. Just six months prior to everything blowing up in my face, I would have described my life as “settled.” And, it was exactly how I wanted to feel.
Recently while I was preaching a sermon on 1 Kings 19:1–15, I was stopped in my tracks as I spoke the words, “Elijah was amid a transition. In fact, his whole life had been nothing but transition. And, I just hate that. I hate transitions.” I don’t know if you know how disconcerting it is to be “stopped in one’s tracks” in the middle of preaching a sermon, but it is a hard transition to make!
The message I received in front of my congregation was that while I may hate life transitions, when I’m working on a play, the transitions are the difference between a good production and one that sucks. If you have seen more than four plays in your lifetime, I am willing to bet that you have seen at least one that had transitions that sucked. When you are in the audience you know it when it is happening even if you wouldn’t be able to articulate what is going on. The extreme version of this is relying on stage lighting and stagehands to make your transitions from one scene to the next. Lights dim. Characters that you have grown to love suddenly turn back into actors you don’t know at all and walk off the stage loudly with little grace. Stagehands dressed in black as if that will make them invisible bring chairs and tables onto the stage then pick up chairs and tables to remove from the stage. Those actors clamor back on the stage and the lights come up to reveal the beloved characters have returned but it takes a few minutes to really love them again. Transitions make the play. In a really good production, the transition should be seamless, so much so that at dinner afterwards if someone were to ask you, “How did they handle the transitions?” you should have to stop and think and would probably have to reply, “I really didn’t notice. I have no idea.” The best company that I know in working transitions does it with impeccable timing and attention to detail so that one scene flows into the next and you can almost swear you are watching a dance instead of a play. Transitions matter.
And, I know this. I’ve known this since I was twenty years old. It is the thing that gets on my every nerve when watching high school plays and if I see a semi-professional company lacking in transitions, I am appalled. But, when it comes to transition in my “real life,” no thank you!
Elijah had been in the middle of watching anyone who preached the way he did die at the hands of Bathsheba and she had promised that she was coming for him too. So, like a good sane prophet should do, he ran away. And, while he was resting under a tree, he asked God to just let him die. He was tired. He was scared. Who could blame him? Instead, God gave him a snack and said “get up and go.” So, once again, Elijah got up and went even though he had no idea to where he was being led. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one day at a time, ease on down the road. There are a million and two devotions and sermons written about the time Elijah spent in the cave and how the whirlwind came and the earthquake came, but that God spoke through the “still small voice.” It is what God said to Elijah that gets me. “What are you doing here?”
Now, my good friend Anne Lamott, (Hey, Anne Lamott!) would find some very interesting and choice words to use right here. She is my favorite writer of all time because of the ways in which she cuts through all the crap to discuss a very honest relationship with God.
So imagine some really great cursing happening here if that is your thing — because I want to cuss God out at this point. God asks, “What are you doing here?”
And, Elijah tells God what he is doing there.
“I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU LED ME HERE. I AM HERE BECAUSE I AM YOUR PROPHET AND EVERYONE WANTS ME DEAD. I AM HERE BECAUSE IF I WERE ANYWHERE ELSE I WOULD BE DEAD. I AM HERE BECAUSE IT IS YOUR DESIRE THAT I BE HERE!”
And, the story goes on from there. God gives Elijah another command to go back the way he had come, to give the people a message, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line is there is no end in sight. There is no settling in or down for Elijah. Transition is the name of the game, it is unending transition and it seems like it would be maddening.
Until . . . until God whispers in my ear, “Oh, but transitions make the play!” Who wants to watch a settled play? Who wants to experience the monotony of sitting still under a tree until you die? The transitions make the play, baby, so get to dancing. And, yes, I am fully aware that I am mixing metaphors here. Get used to it.
Please don’t read this and think I am saying that everything happens for a reason or that God’s plan was for me to get fired. I know some readers of this will believe those things very strongly and more power to you. It just isn’t in my theology. I don’t think God put Bathsheba up to killing Elijah to move him on to another place either. Nope, I was called to a specific ministry and I did it very well — not perfectly, certainly, but well. And, because of some really stupid decisions by people who had power over me, I found myself unsettled and back into transition.
What I do know is that the transitions make the play. I know that even though I may find myself sitting in the cave alongside Elijah waiting for an answer of what is next that God works. God works amid stupid things that human beings do. God dances beautifully on stage with me leading me from one scene to the next. We do not have to dress in black and pretend we are invisible while we move through this transition. Every now and then there may even be some clunky movement of furniture, but that’s okay. We will get through. God and me together in this play called LIFE.
