The sun was shining brightly only a few minutes ago, but now the rain hammers down relentlessly. A distant portion of the sky is pure cornflower blue, and is approaching us fast. It promises yet another change of weather. What a day.
It’s also been a year of changes. Some changes are always bad: a theft, bereavement or breakage, for example, or ill health. Conversely, some changes are good such as recovery, forgiveness and new friends. And some changes seem ambiguous, or cause us unease such as a new job or some other form of responsibility.
Most people dislike change. It threatens their sense of who they are, so we fight change in order to keep our security and self-image. So it’s good that we worship a God who never changes. As it says in the Bible, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end” (Lamentations 3:22).
But the Bible never says that we must never change. Indeed, the Bible generally commands that we do. John the Baptist was forever telling folk to repent, which means a complete change of life’s direction; and Jesus tells us to become perfect as God is perfect, which surely commands a profound change in all of us. Perhaps that’s why the passage in Lamentations continues in verse 23, “His mercies are new every morning”: God customises his mercies according to our daily need rather than being somehow static, staid and therefore liable to becoming boring.
A life that is truly Christian can never be staid because God calls us to continual newness of life. That can seem a challenge until we remember to anchor our lives to an unchangeable God. In proportion to our interior living drawing close to an unchangeable God, so we can cope with external changes of circumstance.
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