mgpcpastor's blog

This piece was published today in our local paper, The Border Watch.
They gave it the title ‘Certainty In A Sea Of Change’.

For a few years now most Tuesday afternoons I drop in on a friend who can’t get around so much anymore. We talk, sometimes share a cuppa, and always a prayer.
Last Tuesday my ongoing appointment ceased. After a long season of physical decline my friend died. Tuesdays will be different from now on.
Over the years this pattern has recurred in various ways. People I’ve visited, homes I’ve been welcomed into, time spent, stories heard, reflections and prayer offered no longer take place because those folk have died as well.
Sometimes I wonder how I adjust to these changes. I think of families and loved ones who have far larger seasons of adjustment to make.
Oddly enough it is these departed friends who have so often provided me with the example and encouragement I (and others) need.
You see, there’s a notion floating around that older folk don’t like change and don’t adjust to it well. We make jokes about flashing lights on microwave ovens where clocks have never been reset, or live in fear if we’re watching the news that Gran won’t ask us what this ‘twerking’ is that everyone’s talking about. We wonder why tradition, routine and consistency seem so important.
Well, fact is, that older folk are used to change. Their lives are completely overwhelmed by it. Change in their health, as people who’ve never gone to doctors have a cupboard full of packets of medicines. Change in their relationships, as the people they cared for now care for them. Change in their social circles, as friends diminish and die.
It’s not change that’s the problem. Instead it’s the simple fact that in a life of so much uncontrollable change people often grow to value consistency and simplicity. And they appreciate islands of stability in a life that is a tempest sea of change.
I think that’s one of the reasons why the words to the hymn Abide With Me resonate so deeply with many. The Armed Forces gravitated toward it as well, in no small part because of the phrase ‘change and decay in all around I see, O Thou Who changest not, abide with me’. Year after year we sing that song at our Services of Remembrance, pointing to the eternal hope and values that sustain us in the uncertainties of life.
Many of those I visited valued consistency not in a failing effort to buttress themselves against that which is inevitable, but because they sought more and more echoes of that which reminded them of the one who ‘is the same yesterday and today and forever’. The Bible tells us that the one who Abide With Me refers to is not some general thought of deity, but the Lord Jesus Christ.
Over and over again I’ve been privileged to not only hear this testimony, but to see it lived out in those don’t grasp onto that which never lasts but who cling to that which carries the aroma of eternity.
It’s an example that teaches and helps me to find and hold onto the enduringly valuable as I adjust to the many incremental changes of life, and perhaps it’s a pattern which could encourage you as well.
The ‘one who changest not’ waits for all who seek him.