Bacon, Eggs and God

 

Change

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 

Certainly we live in a changing world. Everything is continually presented as being “New and Improved.” Each year car and truck manufacturers offer up new models. Annual fashion shows present their new creations and so go the changes in style. Pharmaceutical companies change their formulae. Cell phone and computer manufacturers seem to change their products almost daily. Some countries have even changed the time by way of Daylight Savings Time. Some change has a positive outcome, but other changes, well…not so much.

Teenagers change their relationships as often as some people change their socks. Married couples also continue to change partners; divorces rates being greater than 70 percent in some countries. Textbooks have been changed in an attempt to rewrite history. Denominations have even changed the scriptures to fit the theology of their founding leader.  Change, ceaseless, wearisome change, seems to be woven into the very fabric of our daily existence.

We are fickle, moody and unstable! We build castles in the shifting sands; we promise much and perform little; doing something today and wishing it undone tomorrow; full of bravery as to the future and cowards for the present; changing our opinions at the command of our interests. We make our way through life, not as a bird of passage, intent upon arriving at an unseen home, but to a greater extent as butterflies, flittering this way and that, without any certain course in mind.

In a world of change it is reassuring to know that one thing is immutable.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

It is the Deity of Christ that reveals the one who is absolute, indisputable, undeniable, fixed, final, permanent, unchangeable and unchanging. The attributes which exclusively belong to Deity are applied to Him. Omnipresent: Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. Omniscient: And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? Omnipotent:  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

What Jesus was to others yesterday, he is to us today and he will be to our children tomorrow. In every sense of the word Jesus was, and is, the same, both in the sense that his character is the same all through the ages; it is unchanged and unchangeable. Although we change in different stages of our lives, often within short periods of time, Jesus is the same everywhere and always.

Seeing the continual changes in the world, in ourselves, in our friends, it brings me great joy to know that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is just the same as ever. The same God who made universe; the same God of Abraham, of Moses; the same who took our flesh and was made man; the same who was crucified, rose again and ascended into heaven; the Christ of the Gospels, ever the same.

The secret of our confidence in a changing world is the unchangeable Christ. Let time bring with it what it may, for we are assured of his fidelity. Yesterday we found him precious; he is the same today, comforting our newest grief. Yesterday we heard his voice; his name was on the lips of those who spoke to us the Word of God. The teachers are gone and we have outgrown them, but he is still the same; the Truth is with us. The deep reality of life remains the same and the words forever fall strangely on our ears; the future seemingly unknown and unimaginable. We often withdraw, puzzled in our attempt to grasp the mystery of the world to come. It is only the thought of our immutable God that raises us up and out of the confusion of changing things.