Douglas Young

It’s amazing how easy it is to tear something down as opposed to building something. Recently, my father-in-law and I broke down a large, wooden swing set in about 30 minutes. When my dad, my father-in-law and I originally put it together, it took the better part of 6 hours. It came down a lot easier than it went up.

In Romans 15:1-2, Paul says, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” Christians are to be in the business of building one another up. It’s not a simple process; moreover, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort. But it’s essential to who we are and is a part of our born anew by Jesus’ blood genetic make-up.

Criticism, though, comes much easier to us. It’s not introspective; therefore, it allows us to play judge and jury without compunction. Criticism is destructive and with ease it can bring a person down like a stone from the sling of a Israelite shepherd boy.

Inevitably, today or tomorrow or the next day, you are going be in a position to either build a person up who needs it or tear a person down who doesn’t need it. Please choose the former and not the latter! It’s what God would have you to do.

The last two months have been immensely intense, terribly frustrating, and yet incredibly enlightening. Uprooting a family from one state to another, selling a house for which we took a horrible hit, having to say “See ya later” (we refused to use the word “goodbye” if at all possible) to people we love tremendously, and struggling to overcome sleep deprivation from an experience I wanted to forget have made transitioning into a new work not the most pleasant experience in the world. But now that we’ve turned the corner on the things listed above, things are considerably better.

Transitions are a fact of life for us all. Some are easier than others to endure. The transition from junior high to high school is significantly less taxing than the transition from high school to college. The transition from high school to college pales in comparison to that of single life to married life. All transitions carry varying degrees of adaptive difficulties.

I think it providential that not long before I would face what has been my toughest transition to date, I’d been given a number of different books to help along the way. One such book was William Bridges’s Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. How fitting!

All of this has put a number of different things into perspective for me.

• God’s presence no longer seems afar, nor should it (Acts 17:27-28).
• I am definitely attuned to God’s opening of doors for his servants (Revelation 3:8).
• Family must be forged with love, patience, and endurance.
• Friends are indeed precious!