Life is changing constantly. Sometimes the circumstances we live in change and force us to do something new and unfamiliar, and sometimes we choose to change something in our life and try something different.

The former happens all by itself. We might think we are in control, but often we are actually not. Circumstances change constantly. Sometimes we don’t even realise the change until it is there, like the stages of life: early childhood, school age, graduation, learn a profession, work, marry, have children, and then become grandparents.

Suddenly there is no more time for sports or a hobby we liked, friends leave the island, new people enter our lives, not to talk of every new generation of smart phones, apps, or Netflix series.

Then there are the changes we choose. While automatic or forced change might not always be easy either, trying to change can be tough even once we made the decision. We often try to push against it for a period of time, procrastinate.

Why take a risk if you don’t have to? It is a process and can require effort, work, money, and most of all courage, because there is often some fear involved. What if it does not work out? What will others say or think?

My trip to the New World

I remember very well when I first left my home country of Germany to study in North America as a 23-year-old university student.

One of my best friends had migrated to Calgary in Canada six years earlier and I always wanted to visit him some day. So when the university newspaper wrote about a new exchange programme with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, I applied, even though I had said at my high school graduation that I would never want to speak another word in English, my least favourite subject in school.

To my horror, the selection of candidates happened in a big room with 200 students present. One after the other, we were interviewed by an American guest professor about why we were interested in one of the several programmes in different North American universities, and the whole interview was in English!

I must admit, I wanted to quit my application right there and then, as my high school English really was very poor to say the least. Then I thought: what do I have to lose (except what those 200 people might think of me, but mind you, who were they anyway)?

So, I tried to explain that most new impulses in modern theology came from North America after the Second World War, and that I thought it might be good to get exposed to new ideas and different views. I said that I really enjoy learning, especially about cultures and people.

A couple of weeks later I received a letter requesting me to come to the International Office about my exchange to the US!

I was told that my English level was just not good enough for being the first to be sent to Wilfrid Laurier, but that they liked my reasoning for an exchange, and I would learn the language fast once immersed into the new culture. My chosen change was changed by them. It reminded me of a proverb: man thinks and plans, but God guides and decides.

So a few weeks later I was sitting in a plane to New York. My plan was to take a Greyhound bus from there to Knoxville, Tennessee (I was very naive about the distances in North America).

My courage almost left me when I asked for directions at JFK to the bus terminal. The answer was mumbled so fast in that New York accent, that I did not understand a word.

It was another obstacle as I stood there with two huge suitcases, both without handles, a guitar, and wearing a winter coat in September to save on luggage. I felt like crying and going home. But I persevered.

Somehow I found the right bus that took me to the bus terminal in Manhattan. After some more language obstacles, I was on tour to Knoxville with a six-hour stop in Washington from midnight to morning, another 18-hour bus ride, and I arrived at midnight in Knoxville where I waited in the bus terminal for safety reasons.

At dawn I took a taxi to the campus, more than 48 hours without a room or real rest in a country that was portrayed on television as if there were criminals on every street corner. It was tough. But after a short rest I was ready to discover the new places.

While I doubted my decision to go to the US on that first day several times, I am glad I did not turn around to fly back. I learnt so many new things, different ways to approach life and its ins and outs, and met so many new people, many of whom became friends, including my beautiful bride of 40 years.

I learnt how to work on myself to overcome obstacles. It was a process that changed me in so many ways. Indeed, my English improved rapidly, and to my surprise I learnt to enjoy reading, writing, and speaking English.

What if?

Sometimes we may wonder what would have happened if we had made different decisions. My life would have been totally different in every aspect if I had not taken this step of faith. And somehow looking back it was not as bad as it appeared in the moment.

A verse from my father’s favourite poem, Stufen (steps), by Hermann Hesse, came to mind:

A magic dwells in each beginning,

protecting us, telling us how to live.

Change made the Church possible

This is what the apostles had to realise as well, first when they met Jesus at the shoreline and decided to leave everything behind and follow him, then on Good Friday, and finally after Christ had ascended to the Father 40 days after Easter (Ascension Day is celebrated next Thursday in the church calendar, in Germany it is also Father’s Day).

They wondered: what to do next? Jesus had commanded them on Ascension Day (Mt 28:19, NIV): “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Was it right then to bring the Gospel to the gentiles? Did they have to become Jewish first and be circumcised? What about the purity laws the disciples had grown up with?

Peter had a vision that taught him God can declare anything and anybody pure (Acts 11:1-18) and Paul, formerly a Pharisee named Saul, had to change his whole idea of religion and righteousness. He had persecuted the early Church because he thought the old way, the familiar way, was the only way God permitted.

He then left everything behind, including his name, he shared with the first king of Israel, and went on several mission trips to places he had never been before. He had to overcome a lot of hardship and animosity.

At the same time he met thousands of people who found the joy of faith through his work. In Philippians 3:8 (NIV), Paul states about his old and new life: “What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”

Without Paul’s courage probably none of us would be Christian today, in fact, world history would have been very different without the courage of the apostles to leave the past behind and open up to something new.

It takes courage to try something new

Holding on to the old can sometimes feel like an addiction. Some will struggle endlessly to find the courage and strength to try to change. Others first have to hit rock bottom to start anew, to turn a hopeless end into an endless hope.

The good news is, Christ invites us to have a new beginning. Even if we mess up again and again, His grace deletes the mistakes and baggage of the past and opens up new realms, leading us to a new way of life we might never have thought possible.

We can change, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. It might feel different and unfamiliar at first and may require letting go. Some attempts may fail, and we can learn from the mistakes of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, who knew how not to build one in 999 ways, to come up with an enlightening idea in the end.

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary Untied Methodist Church in Smith’s