Feel A Change Coming
Car trends change. If they didn’t, no 2019 Camaro ZL1 1LE driver would be caught dead without Frenched headlights. At shows, all the Plymouth Dusters would have huge aluminum wings, Japanese decals, and neon underglow, and the Ram TRX would come with curb feelers. Yes, curb feelers.
Car truths change too. Remember when an automatic transmission would add a full second to a new Mustang’s ¼ mile E/T? A Porsche with a slushbox would lose to a paddock of manual-equipped ones a few decades ago. Now, the opposite is true.
In life, change is the name of the game. It even pervades Christianity, for better or worse. Read through the Psalms, and note how often God is petitioned to judge the wicked, exert his power, and show his wrath. Today, most Christ-followers spend more time fearing God’s wrath than demanding to see it. But the people of Israel understood themselves as plaintiffs, not defendants, in God’s court.
Or consider the famous fire-and-brimstone sermon given by 18th-century preacher Jonathan Edwards, in which he described New England settlers as standing “on the knife’s edge” separating salvation and eternal damnation. Amazingly, this was his invitation to join the body of Christ. Today, some pastors fall into the “you catch more flies with honey” evangelism style, sometimes even omitting any reference of hell for fear of scaring new believers.
And yet, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” as is recorded in Hebrews 13:8. In 2,000 years, that message of hope proclaimed by the earliest evangelists didn’t die with them as the next generation of evangelists took their place. That message of hope has only gotten stronger through the outreach of any generation between then and now. The words of Jesus were the full truth to early believers who risked their lives to share it to the ends of the earth, just as they are to modern believers who fear risking their reputations. Think of the wildly different dangers confronting believers over the centuries as they found the exact same comfort in those words – words that speak of a God whose changeless forgiveness, love, comfort, and action have never been irrelevant or outdated.
Sometimes we change, for better or worse. If your Lamborghini Diablo VT poster was recently covered up by a poster of a 1936 Auburn Speedster, that Lambo didn’t change. You did. And that’s okay.
So if you must change, improve. If you must stay the same, be faithful to the truth. And if you need something unchanging, look nowhere else but to our unchanging God. You can cling to other things, sure. But trying to make curb feelers work on a stanced Hyundai Genesis 3.8 Coupe is just not going to happen.
