Change is Coming
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.”
Malachi 3:6
Growing up, I lived “out in the county.” At least, that is what I told my friends who lived in town. To get to our house, you had to leave the city limits and spend a good 15 minutes heading west on Franklin Road. During that drive, you would pass corn and cotton fields, some soybean fields and a hundred-acre cow pasture where you could always see the most glorious sunset with rolling hills in the distance. We would always tell folks who were coming for a visit to look for the white fence that ran along that cow pasture, and our street was just around the corner.
Yet, nothing lasts forever; time marches on. The city has now been creeping further “out into the county” for the past decade. My parents do not have to go into town to go to the grocery store anymore. There is now one five minutes away. There are gas stations, schools and new neighborhoods popping up everywhere. And sadly, I just read in the paper that the cow pasture will soon be home to a retirement community. The sight of the sunset behind those pristine hills won’t look the same with apartment buildings in the foreground. Change is tough, and I haven’t met anyone who likes it much. And yet, it is a fact of life.
Before becoming rector of the previous church I served, I asked the vestry if they wanted to grow. They emphatically said yes with big smiles on their faces. They longed to grow, but then I asked them, “Are you willing to change?” After a long silence and a few strange looks, they mumbled that they thought they could change. Change is hard, and it is not always fun. Sometimes to grow means something will be lost. I mourn the fact that the county road on which I grew up will not look the same, and yet my wishing for the glory-days-of-old will not change reality.
The same is true with my life in Christ. If I want to grow as a disciple of Jesus, some things must change. I must leave some things behind and adjust to new realities, such as fatherhood. Where is God calling you to grow, to change? What might you lose in the process? Yet, more importantly, what will you gain? Though you and I are must react to the changes and chances of this life, we are anchored to the God, who changes not. And for that, we can be grateful.
