The popping of a jar lid has a distinctive sound. A sharp, quiet inhale like a child popping a finger out of their mouth.

It’s the sound of one of two things, either the joy of seeing a glistening smooth surface as you’re first into the jam or, like today, the sound of inevitability and purging.

It was time for the pickles to go.

There was a kind of meditation in standing at the sink, draining and discarding something once good that now was not. Ridding the old so that there can be space for the new.

Whoever knew that discarding pickles could be a spiritual experience?

There are seasons in life that bring me back to the rhythms of the farm I grew up on. Spring was a time for clearing away. Clearing away stubble and clearing space. Cleaning out barns and laying down new straw to prepare for new-birthed calves.

Cleaning out old jars to make space on the shelf for new ones.

Often the meditative rhythm of simple tasks gives us insight into the grander rhythms of our life. 

For me, the pickles were a prompting that brought me to think about transitions and new stages in life.

There are points in our lives where we have an urging within us to create space, to lay the foundation for something new that is coming. It may be seen or unseen, but there’s a sense in our spirit that there is newness on the horizon and our job, as we wait, is to create space.

Making way for new wine skins that have not yet arrived.

As I poured out the pickles into the sunshine reflected in my metal kitchen sink, I though about what the pickles represented. The effort, the careful stewardship, the good yes and use of time and resource. How like so many things in our lives.

In different seasons in our lives there are opportunities and resources brought to us that mean a good ‘yes’. An engagement in good work that God is doing where we feel useful and purposeful and equipped. We can look back on these rows of gleaming moments of ministry and, hands on hips, feel a nodding satisfaction that yes, this was good.

But not all of the good is for every and all time.

Seasons of life sometimes mean that there needs to be space for the new. New opportunities, new people, new ways of seeing God in the world and aligning with him. And in order to do that, sometimes space needs to be carved out of the fullness that we experience.

And the carving out is hard. It’s hard to release the work of your hands and the glistening security of having all of those things lined up neatly.

It’s hard to make space and not know yet what will fill it.

And it’s hard not to empty everything in a frantic grasp for the next new meaningful thing. If we do, then we’re left looking at empty shelves and wondering, ‘now what?’.

Creating space is seasonal, it is intentional, it is thoughtful, it is Spirit-led.

Tossing just to toss or holding on to what isn’t needed takes us out of mindful listening to God’s movement. To sift and sort what God would have us do, what to keep, what to release.

The sifting and sorting can take time. Like a crawl space whose sorting spreads out and you feel exhausted at the choices around you. Or you empty a space, a chunk at a time, and don’t yet know what will replace it. And a small part of you begins to worry that you’ve lost something that you can’t regain. Purpose, meaning, prestige, intent, fulfillment, relationship, encouragement.

It takes wisdom beyond ours to know where to begin and where to stop and wait. It takes listening to God, it take patience, it takes observing the wisdom of those around you whose spiritual rhythms are worth emulating.

But it’s not a process we enter into alone. There is God’s voice, still and small or insistent, that will lead us as we choose to engage, choose to be available, choose to listen.

There is good along this journey. There is growth, there is hope, there is refining, there is release, there is grieving, and there is comfort. And in all of this there is direction and presence. We are not alone in this.

God has for us something. Something from the past to revisit, new life, new experiences, remembering a part of us that seemed lost. There is a promise in the waiting.

We just need to be willing to pour out and wait with expectation in the space.