Living with changes
Iremember sitting under a large magnolia tree in front of my great-grandfather’s house and talking about all the changes he witnessed in his life. He was born in 1886 and lived through the changes from horse and buggy travel, oil lamps, and no refrigeration to cars, electrical lights, and refrigeration. He spoke about cranking a Model T with a hand crank and magneto, stuffing tires with cotton when air was not available, and getting his first battery in his car. He lived with those changes and adjusted to them until he became much older. At a certain point, change was difficult for him. I remember he said the weather had not been right since they sent up rockets and punched holes in the sky.
I noticed the same thing about my grandparents, who in time, became less accepting of changes and settled in on what they knew. We bought my grandmother a microwave and she never cooked with it, but did use it to heat things up. We bought her an air conditioner, but she would only run the fan as the compressor running also ran up her power bill. When we visited, we gave her money so we could turn the air conditioner on!!
Many of us are that way as we get older. We make fewer new friends, listen to less new music, try less new kinds of food, keep to a familiar routine, and become less enthusiastic about changes in general. Personally, I must be more intentional in learning new things and tend to want what is familiar to me.
This is true in the arena of faith. Early in our journey of faith, we tend to be very receptive to new experiences, new methods, and newness period. As we get older, we tend to be more skeptical and less receptive to change. Thankfully, some things never change. Truth never changes. God never changes. His Word and will never change. The Gospel never changes. However, God is a God of the new and wants to do new things in our lives. To accept His new work means to allow Him to transform us into a vessel able to receive the new. Jesus said, “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. Instead, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.” Let us all endeavor to be receptive to God’s new work lest we become useless to Him and others.
