Thought For The Week 17 March 2024

This week I’ve been reflecting on change. Change is a funny thing. None of us likes it much, maybe because there seems to be so much of it. It seems baked into everything, from the four seasons to the universe that continues to expand. Things come and go. Some things that change we don’t miss, but other things may be deeply significant and stir grief in us. But at the same time, we can long for change, especially when something doesn’t seem right or just to us.  Often, we can imagine something better, even if we don’t know how to make it happen. When change happens, we need to acknowledge how we feel about it. The irony is that even our feelings about changes that happen change. We will experience a rollercoaster of emotions, excitement, anxiety, disorientation, anger, hope, and new purpose. These are all a part of being human and the change experience.

Significantly, change is at the heart of the gospel. Jesus calls his disciples from their ordinary vocations and gives them a new identity. No longer are they fishermen but ‘fishers of people’. Jeremiah talks of the new covenant the Lord will make with God’s people. A covenant that gives them a new (read ‘changed’) heart and mind toward God. Throughout scripture, we read time and again, stories of people who meet with God and are transformed and changed. The order in which things happen in this process is important. People don’t change and then come to God. Rather, God forgives people’s failure to love God and others, and then, in this lush meadow of grace, transformation happens. God works with us as he finds us. We first belong, then we believe, and then we learn what it means to love God and others well and work in partnership with him.

Change is, then, love it or loath it, a part of what it means to be human and imitators of Jesus. For the Spirit constantly draws us into a transformed and transforming life lived toward God.

Luke