Everything Must Change; Nothing Stays the Same

 Let’s face it change can be unsettling; it requires our leaving our comfort zone and adjusting to a new way of doing things. Change can be as subtle as using a new pen, sitting in a different chair at dinner, or as profound as losing a job or a loved one. Some changes are optional; others are forced on us. In all instances change is associated with anything from temporary discomfort to long-standing emotional pain. 

Our Gospel lesson (John 12:20-33) suggests that the incarnation of God changed everything through Jesus: through his birth, his life, his teachings, and especially through his dying and rising to new life. It’s a message of hope that God is working in this world to make everything new through Jesus. Yet we know the birth of new life is not without pain. Childbirth is more than a metaphor for life; it is life itself, but it’s preceded by dark days of preparation, ultimately yielding to pain and eventually new life.

Meister Eckhart writes that human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; our ego gives these animals permission to reside and most of us quietly feed. And between them, painfully pushing them out, as in childbirth, that Christ must be born, and laid in their own manger. (Evelyn Underhill, “The Light of the World,” Watch for the Light, 2008)

Christ is the essence of God’s love, and his birth is the birth of love in our souls. This birth in us is for a purpose beyond ourselves in that the love of God can only be manifest in the world through us.

How will we surrender to our new life? What changes will we make? How are we preparing during these dark, passively aggressive days of Lent. Change does not happen automatically. 

In a very real sense, if we are to experience the new life that God offers us, we must open ourselves to God’s will and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Sure, we’d much rather avoid any kind of difficulty or discomfort and just stay in the same old rut we’ve been in. But change requires us to resist the ways we typically use to avoid difficult decisions and discomfort. 

Following the will of God requires persistence and in some cases may result in personal upheaval. It’s not easy to resist the tendency to avoid discomfort that ultimately heals and transforms us into a new life.

That sounds out of reach and even harsh. But in a very real sense it can be as simple as aligning ourselves with God’s peace and compassion by reaching out to others in need. When we make changes in our lives, we’re not just engaged in a self-help project! We’re opening ourselves to the change that God has already made through Jesus, and that God continues to make in all our lives. Everything must change; nothing stays the same.

To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn