FROM THE PASTOR
October 28, 2018
Everything changes… nothing stays the same forever (except God and His love). Every day a new challenge comes over the horizon… a new obstacle waits around the bend… and tomorrow becomes today while a new tomorrow, with its own unknowns, waits it’s turn to become today. This time-of-year should remind us that nowhere is “change” more evident than in the passing seasons. I became very aware of this as I sat shivering in the boat one morning this week trying my hardest to enjoy one last adventure before I’m forced to store the boat for the winter.
As I looked around nothing seemed familiar. If I didn’t know the lake as well as I do, I could have been easily fooled into thinking I had launched at the wrong lake. The trees along the lake had turned from shades of green to a canvas of brilliant colors… the docks were gone… the lake, once crystal clear, was now translucent with floating particles of minute debris that only a week earlier lay undisturbed on the lake bottom. That too had “changed” as the lake’s thermocline relocated causing an action known as “turn-over to occur. Even the weed beds, which held so many bass a few weeks earlier, had now disappeared. The cause? The “change” of light. From 15 hours of high angle penetrating light to less than 9 hours of low penetrating light, when combined with the floating particles, had starved each plant of nourishment causing it to retreat into a slumber well below the surface… change.
Time did not exist prior to the creation of the world. God, being eternal, has no personal use for time. In fact, He still exists outside of the constraints of time. Time was a special gift of “change” initiated by God for His very special creation… mankind. In fact, the first chapter of Genesis confirms God gave us the seasons as time pieces of excellence…
Genesis 1:14, 18 (NASB)
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
18 … and God saw that it was good.
So, if “change” is God initiated, why do we resist it so? Even though nothing ever stays exactly the same shouldn’t we be satisfied in the knowledge that “change”, when God initiated, remains a Gift of God. Shouldn’t we, as Paul proclaimed… “Rejoice and again I say rejoice”?
Consider this… God does not require our permission to bring “change” into our lives. “Change” also does not have to mean that God is disciplining us. Of this I am confident… God initiated change is always for our betterment… to draw us closer to Him because only He is our perfect satisfaction. Change, is provided by God at His appointed time…
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NASB)
1 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
If we really trust God… shouldn’t we look first for the “gift” within change before we decide to resist?
Thank you for your faithfulness. Pastor Larry
