I’m beginning for probably the first time in my life to have the hope that change is indeed a good thing.
“Change is good” is a disclaimer that I’ve put on things that make me uncomfortable, but it’s not something that I rest much weight on when I’m alone in my mind. Change eats away at my comfort and all that I hold dear; it invades, unapologetically, into the way I would have things be and mercilessly rips all of my desires out of their plausible condition, crumbling them to dust in my hands. I fear it because it seems to care nothing for me; if it was anything save indifferent to me, I would suspect that it pursues my destruction before its own interests.
What I am coming to see however is that “change”, “circumstance” and “situation” are nice words that I use to disguise their true identity as the hand of God. My resentment toward my “circumstance” is nothing other than me despising God Himself because I’m not getting my way; likewise, my fear of “change” is nothing other than my lack of trust in God’s provision.
If God “works out everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His [own] will” (Eph.
Thus, the man-centered method of justifying the things that disappoint and injure me is to say that “God never intended this for me” which while making God into a kind of Santa Claus that can fill my stocking with goodies but isn’t allowed to give me coal, is supposed to make me feel better because at least God still “wants me to be happy”. On the other hand, the God-centered approach would be to say that God is just and can do whatever He pleases; that what I, due to my small and foggy vision, now consider a negative circumstance is really something very good for me. It says that God is sovereign and that, although He may want for me to be happy, He’d rather I be saved. Which reminds me of a quote (I believe by C.S. Lewis) “God will save us; at whatever cost to us and at whatever cost to Himself”.
How beautiful, that God is more than benevolent; that He pursues us as a jealous lover and is determined to rescue us from our prostitution. That He infiltrates the walls of my den of iniquity and pulls me out of the mire.
Indeed, I may fuss and kick about the change in my surroundings, but I dare not say that God does not love me.
4 comments:
Yes change is a very strange thing........time for that matter is one of the strangest things! It is amazing to me how time is constantly moving. Constantly bringing on change right out from under our noses. It moves so slowly, yet so fast all at the same time that it catches us off guard more often than not. By staying focused on the present, time seems to be moving at a snails pace however, when one looks back (in history) time seems to have flown by at an extraordinary speed!
We are creatures of habit yet we are also creatures who dislike change. First off, we have the same four seasons a year...however, each year the season seems different than the last. For instance, last years winter was very different from this years, yet somehow there was something very familiar about both. There is something very objective though not distinguishable about both years that I hold dear, and would not change for the world.
Christmas is the very same exact holiday each year; however it feels as if I'm celebrating it for the first time every year.
God obviously intended for it to be this way...imagine how boring it would be if there was no change!! If every birthday felt exactly the same as the last...every Christmas was just another day one had to plod through? Truly change is one of many mercies God has bestowed upon men!
Let me add a disclaimer here...change doesn't always seem to be a merciful part of life (as you mentioned earlier). It sometimes REALLY sucks! I think it can be related to pain in a lot of ways...I can't remember the quote exactly but I have read/heard about C.S. Lewis's statement "pain is God's chiseling tool."
Time indeed is a mystery. The greatest mystery of it for me is how, though I put much effort into analyzing it thoroughly, I can never understand it; and yet, I understand everything else through it. I cannot fathom anything that doesn't exist within it, yet I have no understanding of what it (itself) is. Strange isn't it, that there is almost a hierarchy of importance; we being able to understand only that which is defined by something bigger. When time is the reality that we look through, we cannot understand it because it itself is our understanding; it would have to be much smaller in order to fit it under the microscope, and we would need to compare it to something much bigger in order to shrink it. Indeed, if we could analyze it under the microscope, wouldn’t the microscope be the greater of the two? I don't know if I'm making any sense at all here, but it's interesting that we can only understand our subdivisions; the biggest and most important thing by which we see cannot be understood because by very nature it is what we understand things by. If we were to understand it, it would not be the most important thing; after all, our understanding of it would supercede it.
This leads me to thinking about faith. Any of my understanding comes through faith, yet I can’t understand what faith itself is; perhaps this is why. I therefore conclude that there is “sight”, and there is “things seen”; there are glasses, and there is what you look at through them. There is faith, and there is reason.
Now I’ve gone off the topic, but that I can’t help. Anyway…you started it.
Wow,I have never seen it like that I have to admit,I guess because change usually seems to hurt.
But God has a reason for change ,obviously.
And i don't see why now and maybee I never will,But I trust God more through it ,Because even though it seems hard going through it,We always seem to make out.
Hey Girls, thanks for posting! I look forward to more conversations.
Yes, time and change is something that I've always felt unresolved about. It is life's "rhythm" as C.S. Lewis would say; God's method of our experiencing reality successively. Anyway, hopefully I will learn to be thankful for His method of mercy.
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