Most people dislike change. Change disrupts. It creates trauma, turmoil and unrest. It turns my little playhouse of life upside down and inside out every time I get things in place like I like them. Let’s be real honest here—most of us don’t just dislike change; we hate it and we fight against it with every cell of our being.
But, change is the basic building block of life. If one does not change, one soon becomes a dinosaur and extinction is just around the corner. But for some reason, most of us believe we can hold on to things and keep them just like they are. We do this in our families, but our babies grow into adults who don’t need us. We do this in relationships by holding on too tightly and they falter and fail. We do this in the church, and…perhaps this is why we are not very effective in reaching our world. You may be playing dodge ball with change, but eventually you will get flattened by it. Change is inevitable.
At this moment my frustration with change is creating a volcanic anger deep within my being. My head wants to explode, and I want to launch like a Saturn rocket. The details are unimportant; suffice it to say, it has to do with a computer that will not obey me. I am helpless—and I don’t like that feeling. It’s a machine; I’m a man. I just don’t get it. The directions seem so simple, but they might as well be written in a foreign language. I don’t understand them and I feel like a dinosaur shivering alone on a glacier, waiting with dread for the temperature to fall as the dark night of the soul sets in. Change shakes you to the core and then like a snow globe allows all the pieces to settle back into place—but the past is now the present and the future is coming like a bullet train.
There is one ray of hope—one glimpse of glorious sunlight in all this. God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But, before you get too excited, just remember; everything and everyone He touches must change. It is inevitable.
“Stop dwelling on past events, and brooding over times gone by; it’s springing up—can’t you see it? I am making a road in the desert, rivers in the wasteland” (Isa. 43:19 CJB). I guess I should take a break, get a drink from that river, and take a stroll on the road. Who knows, the change in scenery just might do all of us some good. Well, at least it’s warm in the desert and this old dinosaur won’t freeze to death tonight.