Skip to main content

The Only Constant

                For the 28 years that I have been in Estevan, I have used the exact same mechanical pencil to write my sermons.  When I play squash, I use the lock that I used in high school gym class.  I have a hair brush that I bought in grade 7 (sadly, I don’t need it much these days).  I have lived in the same house for 20 years and I have been married to Sara for almost 25 years.  Every Christmas eve, since I was 10 years old, I have watched the black and white version of “A Christmas Carol”.  Clearly, I am not someone who likes change!
                However, the past few years have brought a lot of changes to my life and to the lives of those around me.  Here are some basic, but important, lessons that I have learned.
                1.  Change is inevitable.   Everybody changes all the time!   If you do not believe me, look in the mirror.  Children grow up.  People move or pass away and it all goes by very quickly.  “What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14).  Nothing here is permanent.  We are foolish to act otherwise.
                2.  God commands us to change.  Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).   Ephesians 4:22-24 tells us to take off our old selves and put on our new selves.  Growth is not only expected, it is required!  As Bob Goff says, “We cannot be new creations if everything stays the same”.
                3. Change teaches lessons that can be learned no other way.  I did not understand what it was like to have your kids grow up and leave home, until it happened.  I did not know how it felt to have a loved one deal with cancer, until it happened.  When things change, we can become bitter, or we can be teachable.  Paul said that he learned to comfort others because he experienced God’s comfort when trouble came (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).  If we learn something, then the experience becomes useful. 
                I am still not a big fan of change, but I manage it better when I remember that God can use it to make me more like himself. 
                “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Terrible Trade

            I used to have a Wayne Gretzky rookie card.               However, when I was 12 years old I did not like Wayne Gretzky, so I traded the card to my brother.   A few years ago, I remembered that incident, so I went looking for the card. Sure enough, there is was in a box in my mom’s basement.   Now here is the thing:   even in bad shape, Gretzky rookie cards sell for around $250.   Needless to say, that was not a good trade on my part.   I simply did not recognize what I had and so I traded away something valuable for something with almost no value at all.             With that in mind, notice how the letter to the Galatians starts: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Good Funeral

As I write this article, it is Monday morning and I am getting ready to go to a funeral. As I think about the day ahead, I am not anticipating a sad day. There will be sadness in it, some tears will be shed for sure, but this will be a day of celebration. For as long as I have known them, and for many years before that, George and his wife Doris have been faithful followers of Christ. Their faith was not just something that they talked about or something that they had in name only. Rather, it was something that influenced how they lived, what they valued and how they saw their entire lives. George was not a very vocal man, but he was influential. His home was always open to anyone who needed a meal or a place to stay. In fact, that is how I first met them. When I was an intern, preaching in the town of Wawota , I stayed with George and Doris. When our Bible camp needed a place to go for a hayride, George and Doris were the first ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Don’t Be a Tourist

                  From the moment that God told Abraham to leave his home and follow him (Genesis 12:1-3), God’s people have understood that they are on a journey.                 That being true, the essential question becomes, “How are you making that journey?”   T here are two options: You can be a tourist or you can be a pilgrim.                   Tourists leave their real life behind for a little while so that they can visit another place.   Generally, they travel in groups and do not mix much with the local people.   They hit the highlights of various regions, but they do not really experience what it is like to live in that part of t...
Post a Comment
Read more