For the past 28 years, I have used the 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). 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. Here are some basic, but important, lessons that I have learned.
First, 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.
Secondly, 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.”
Lastly, 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).
