I recently watched the movie “Life as we know it”. Carolyn and I watched it after just having buried her Dad a day or so earlier. Life as we knew it was now different. Just as in the movie, some event had introduced change into our lives. In the movie two unlikely people were given care for a child after their parents were killed in a car accident. The movie was all about how they coped with getting a child to care for and it changed life as they know it.
As I watched that and thought about that for several days since then, I was reminded (through experience) that life can bring change. Actually life always brings change. Life rarely gives you the same day over and over again with no change.
To one cancer takes a spouse. To another a drunk driver kills a family but escapes unharmed. To another their son goes to prison, to another a job is lost, to another a home burns down. To another a fight breaks out which ends in divorce. To another the food runs out for the pay period.
I think our lives were created to experience change. So often we blame God when change happens. I talked to someone this past week while on a business trip to Toronto Canada. He asked me the question point blank. Why did God kill my family members? I told him that God did not kill them. He asked me why did God allow it to happen then? I told him that yes God allowed it to happen, but rarely did God intervene in what man was doing in order to allow him to have his free will. I told him as we sat over dinner that if I wanted to hit him with my fist that God would not stop me. However, my own knowledge of right and wrong prevents me from doing it. He began to see what I was talking about
God knew that his plan for us needed to include instructions on how to focus on him during our times of change rather than leaving us hanging so we would just blame him for things that were not his fault.
Life brings change. Even Jesus who was perfect and completely fulfilled the will of God for his life was murdered. The enemy of our soul thought he had killed Jesus. However Jesus laid his life down for the forgiveness of our sins and to restore a relationship between us and God. You see even in the most horrific death that Jesus suffered, there was a plan.
In Malachi 3:6 the scripture says this. “I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. What God was saying here is that he does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. We have a rock solid foundation to put our faith in. If God changed and we changed and change occurred to us then how would we know what to hold on to. God says that he does not change and if he did change then he would likely destroy the descendants’ of Jacob because of their sin.
We need to understand that change will occur in our life. Rarely do we like the change that happens either. But in spite of the change that does occur we have someone to put our faith into. I know that my life would not be worth too much without the faith that I can place in the God who loves me and has promised to never leave me nor forsake me.
He never said that nothing will ever happen to me that I don’t like. But he will be with me in my times of trouble. I am very glad that I can attest to his faithfulness to my family in our times of need.
