Times and Seasons: Disruption in the Familiar

Early this year I had a dream in which I and some loved ones were enclosed in a transparent capsule that was submerged in turbulent waters.

Waves crashed and hit against the walls of the capsule, tossing us back and forth. Yet, the walls remained intact. We could not tell where we were, as we were completely surrounded by the violent waters. However, I remember there was a great sense of peace in the midst of it all; none of us were panicked by the situation. I sensed a unanimous heart posture of faith that the capsule would remain intact no matter how violent the waters would get. In her book, The Power of Your Dreams, Stephanie Ike highlights the importance of understanding the tone of a dream when trying to interpret it. Retrospectively, due to the peace I experienced in the dream, I now know that it was from God. He was showing me that the events that were about to unfold in my life would disrupt my sense of normalcy and familiarity, but they would not bring me any harm.

|With time, it has also become clear to me that this disruption has come to signal the end of a season and serve as a transition to the next one.

There are a number of characters in the Bible who also experienced disruptions in their lives, through which God ushered them into new seasons. For instance, when Mordecai informed Esther about Haman’s plot to destroy all the Jews, he came dressed in sackcloth, refusing any clothes and consolation that Esther offered him. It was unusual for Mordecai to appear in that distressed state, and even more unusual that his plea compelled Esther to do something both risky and out of the norm: to appear before the king without being summoned and reveal her identity as a Jew. These events served as a signal to Esther that her season of being pampered and initiated into royalty had come to completion, and that it was time for her to step into the role for which she had become queen: to be God’s instrument of deliverance for her people. In the same vein, when Nehemiah heard about the devastating condition of Jerusalem following the exile period, he was greatly distressed, and he responded by weeping and mourning for days. The sadness he felt became an unusually heavy burden, such that he could not conceal it as he performed his cup bearing duties before the king. In Nehemiah 2:1, he says “I had not been sad in the presence of the king before,” signaling that the burden was had brought a shift in his usual countenance, which pointed to a season's transition in his life. When he went on to build the wall of Jerusalem, it was this burden and his faith that anchored him.

Apostle Isi says that the breaking of a human security system is what exposes your soul to have eternal dialogue that will empower your brain to be able to download solutions for the new day. We see how this exactly played out in Ester and Nehemiah’s lives.

|When their security systems of living within the grand walls of the  palace could not shield them from the crucial crossroads of their destinies, they fasted and prayed, enabling them to have eternal dialogue with God, which resulted in them gaining knowledge for how to manage their transitions into the next season.

In the next post, I will expand more on this, because it ties into how we can respond to the disruptions in our life that have come to usher us into our destiny. Stay tuned and thank you for engaging with this post!