Change
by Jason Arnold
By the time you read this, things will have changed. I don’t know what will have changed, but I am certain that something has changed. There is no way that everything will be the same as it was when I typed this sentence. Or this sentence. Or this sentence…you get the point.
Change is inevitable. The moment God created this world, it began to change (Matthew 6:19), and the clock began to tick. I’ve described “change” from the perspective of sitting in a boat on the water. Sometimes the boat rocks because someone in the boat rocks it, and sometimes the boat rocks because outside forces cause it to rock. Whether it comes from a person in the boat or from wind and waves outside the boat, when the boat starts to rock, the people inside want it to stop. We can handle a few ups and downs for a short time, but then we start to feel uncomfortable, and we need the waves to stop, or we want out of the boat.
Change is exactly the same way. Very few people like change when it is instigated by someone else or from outside forces. Many have said that the word of the year for 2020 should be “canceled,” and that is hard to argue against. I believe the word for 2021, when the year comes to a close, is going to be “change.” Some of that change will be self-imposed. Most of the change will be outside of our control.
But be encouraged that we serve a God who never changes. He never slumbers or ceases to watch over His people (Psalm 121). Jesus was the same at the beginning of time as he was a year ago, today and will be exactly the same a millennium from now (Hebrews 13:8). Since that is true, we must be mindful followers of Christ and nothing else. We must never put our hope in anything temporal knowing that it will certainly change. Instead, we must put all our hope in the One who will never change. Peace, calm in the midst of any storm, is found in this mindset.
Author Bio
Jason is husband to Kim and father to Nolan and their yellow lab, Daisy. He gets his kicks watching baseball, talking about and working on cars, fishing and reading business articles and books. He was called to ministry out of the "real world" of finance in 2007. Since then, he's completed a masters and doctorate degrees and hopes to never write another paper again. He has served as Executive Pastor of Inside-the-Walls Ministry since 2013.