Life Requires Changes

How do you deal with change? It depends on the change is a common answer. The philosopher Heraclitus said “nothing endures but change.” Change affects the way we live, where we live, how we live, even what we eat.

As a child I lived in rural Oklahoma without indoor plumbing. When we moved to “town” things changed. We had indoor plumbing, friends close enough to walk to their house, lots of people everywhere, and we did not raise our vegetables, kill a chicken for Sunday dinner, or have a pond to catch fish for dinner in our backyard. Things changed – some good (indoor plumbing is good) and some not so good – but the short is it was change.

I have come a long way from that farm house in Oklahoma. There have been many changes in my life – some good and some not so good – but life requires changes. If we never change, then we never grow up, leave our parents, or have our own families and homes. We are not created to be stagnant. Every cell in our body is replaced every seven years. Our body changes daily and we cannot stop it. The weather changes daily which affects our lives and we cannot stop it. People come in and out of our lives due to change and we cannot stop it.

Change is a part of life and sometimes we want to say “Stop! No more changes, I cannot take it!” But we cannot stop change, what are we do to when we are overwhelmed with the changes? Is there nothing that we can depend on, something that does not change? The answer is God. God is the same every day, waiting on us to see Him. He holds our hand to guide us through the changes; cradles us when the changes cause us to cry; and gives us strength to handle “one more change.”

God can be seen as the author of change (He did create the world and set into place order so that everything grows and dies) and at the same time God never changes. It appears Heraclitus was correct, change is eternal – some of it good and some of it not so good.

ElaineH