Am I past my “best before” date?
Recently, we were going through our pantry and discovered a number of items that were well past their “best before” dates. I was tempted to risk eating some of them given the type of food and the unopened packaging but, in an abundance of caution, we threw them all out. The reality is that food always loses its nutritional value over time and eventually is unfit for consumption.
Have you ever wondered whether, not unlike food, you were past your professional “best before” date? I’m not referring here to loss of business acumen or leadership skills. And I’m not thinking of business challenges that can cause us to wonder if our best days are behind us. As Jesus said, troubles are part of life. Rather, I’m referring to moments when we wonder whether we’re still where God wants us to be.
In my own case, I began to question my calling to business after decades leading an investment management firm. At that time, my responsibilities were becoming less enjoyable in part because I was spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with increasingly burdensome industry regulations. However, this reality wasn’t the catalyst behind my questioning whether I was in the right place at the right time. Instead, something on the inside was causing me to reconsider my calling from Jesus to business. Eventually, I decided that God was beckoning me into a new chapter and, sometime after, my partners and I negotiated a win-win exit.
Subsequently, I was led to serve as Executive Director of LeaderImpact. In this role, I met Dr. Richard Blackaby, a well-known Christian academic, speaker and author during a conference I hosted in 2016. His thoughts concerning God’s perspective on the seasons of life are both relevant and provocative. Blackaby’s talks were based upon his book “The Seasons of God: How the Shifting Patterns of Your Life Reveal His Purposes for You,” which I strongly recommend to every believer seeking God’s direction. The key scripture passage supporting the book’s title is Ecclesiastes 3, which begins with the words “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”
However, unlike food, God doesn’t intend that we gradually deteriorate over time as implied by the “best before” date on food labels.
In the book, Blackaby makes an important distinction between the stages of life and the seasons of life. Like the life cycle of food, our lives proceed in a linear (though sometimes bumpy!) fashion from birth to death. However, unlike food, God doesn’t intend that we gradually deteriorate over time as implied by the “best before” date on food labels. Rather, our lives unfold according to God’s plans and purposes in distinct stages each of which follows the biblical pattern of four seasons. Thus, for example, a person in her nineties might exit the Winter season of one life stage only to enter the Spring season of the next. Importantly, we are to thrive in every season!
Reviewing my own journey through the lens of Blackaby’s model, I believe God was showing me I was in the Winter of my full time involvement in business. Winter does not imply we are past our “best before” date. Instead, it is a season of letting go of the current stage and welcoming the next.
What professional season are you in? Is God calling you to embrace a new life stage? Let’s discuss.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
