Thought for Today
Numbers 23:19 God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
Matthew 18:3 "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
James 1:17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
This past Sunday, during Coffee Hour, someone used ‘the C word.’ For many of us, especially in church, change is the most frightening word in the English language. One of the most often heard phases in any church throughout Christendom is “Because we’ve always done it that way!” In the important aspects of our lives, and as we age, there is great comfort in the familiar, in the habits of a lifetime. Change often is uncomfortable, always is unfamiliar and frequently is daunting.
Despite the problems associated with change, we always need to be aware that all progress requires change . . . and we always need to remind ourselves that not all change is progress. Without some significant change in technology, I would be chiseling these words on a stone slab with a basalt chisel and a stone hammer instead of using my laptop computer. Without change, instead of sitting at my desk, looking out the window, ensconced in our climate-controlled home, I would be shivering in a dank cave with only the light from a wood fire. In fact, without change, there would not even be a wood fire. Humanity’s learning to start fires was a change from fires only occurring from lightning strikes.
Why do we find change so uncomfortable, so daunting? Is it because of the uncertainty of the unknown? Maybe it is because change often involves disruption to our daily lives. Maybe some of our resistance to change is coded into our DNA. Did some far-distant ancestor notice that every other caveman (caveperson?) who ate that funny looking plant died?
In college I took an elective course in Sociology/Anthropology. I was fascinated by reading about the transitions of our ancestors from hunter-gatherer, tribal societies to agrarian societies. There were certainly disruptions to individual lives. The transitions spanned multiple lifetimes, and some societies never transitioned. I remember thinking at the time, and I still think today that we see echoes of that transition in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain was a hunter. Abel was a farmer. When I think of ancestral memory and of societal transitions, I recall those opening lines of the Viking Funeral Chant, “Lo, there do I see my Father. Lo, there do I see my Mother, and my sisters, and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.”
As we look back at our ancestors and our ancestors-in-the-faith, we see both change and devotion to keeping important traditions and practices. We see times when people of faith have resisted all change and become mired in thoughts and practices at odds with their societies that have moved on technologically. We see times when they have become bogged down in unhelpful rituals and bureaucracies and lost sight of the simplicity of “Luke 10:27 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all :your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
I serve a Congregational Church, part of the UCC. That denomination is part of the Reformed Tradition. A study of the history of Europe in the 16th century quickly reveals both the watershed change in religion and politics and the violent resistance to that change.
Every time I feel discomforted by change, I remind myself that there is one, single, never-changing reality in our world. Our God is IMMUTABLE! God aways was, even before time itself. God still is. God will always be, even after time ceases to exist. And God before Genesis 1:1 is the same God we worship today and the same God who will still be after time ceases to exist. James was correct, “there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
Stay safe, be comforted by our immutable God, trust God,
Pastor Ray