Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8
Dear Jesus, I really don’t like change. I like newness, excitement and adventure, but when it’s all said and done, I want to come home to the normal and known. Grant me grace to accept change, because there’s so much change going on everywhere I look.
A favorite restaurant, serving great food, rich conversation and the ambiance of perpetual welcome, had to close—a casualty of this economy. A colleague, confidant and compadre of decades, has taken another calling. Our eleven year old chocolate Lab, Jackson Brown, has more grey hairs and takes more naps. I’m not looking forward to saying goodbye to him any more than I like saying goodbye to friends as the moving van pulls away. I don’t like it, Jesus. Change is disruptive. Precious things don’t become vintage things overnight.
How thankful we are, there’s One part of our lives that will never change, and that’s you, Jesus. You are the same yesterday, today and forever. That doesn’t make you static or predictable, and far less so, manageable. But it does mean that we can entrust our hearts to you without reservation. In fact, it’s only in knowing you, Jesus, that all change is put into perspective.
The most fundamental change we need is to become like you, and that process is the most disruptive and painful change we will ever go through. Yet with the knowledge that one Day we’ll be as lovely and as loving as you, we gladly surrender to the work of the gospel in our lives.
Likewise, Jesus, the better we know you, the more we come alive to your promise to make all things new. Change has no sovereignty. Nothing is random in this world. Not one thing catches you off guard. The scary becomes the sacred when we’re wearing the lens of the gospel.
Jesus, help each of us see and accept change as a part of a bigger and better story. Convict us when our penchant for predictability takes on the power of idolatry. In a profound sense, we’re not “home” yet. Nothing is as it will be one Day. Because of your life, death and resurrection, we’re heading into an eternity in which everything will be the way it’s supposed to be. No more goodbyes of any variety. Hasten that magnificent Day.
Until then, Jesus, may we love you with abandon, serve you without question and order our lives after your transforming purposes. So very Amen we pray, in your merciful and matchless name.