change

I am sitting in a familiar place in an unfamiliar setting of life. I arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan a few days ago to visit my mom who is in an assisted care facility, connect with my brothers, and help close up my mom's home for the winter season. I stopped in this Starbucks - for the WiFi - to update my blog and check email.... Except for a few decorating differences, most Starbucks look and feel pretty much the same. Sitting here I could have been back in any of the Starbucks back in Tucson. The sameness is comfortable and in some sense masks what is outside the doors. What lies outside the doors is anything but sameness - it in constant change and bears an elevated sense of uncertainty. This week has been a reminder that my own family is in the midst of change. My mom is  in a really nice but unfamiliar living situation. The "family home" with all its memories is closed up for the long winter. Unlived in, it will soon be covered in snow drifts. My dad has passed away and his car now sits unused in the garage. My brothers and my sister and I are at at different places in our lives as we watch our kids grow up and move out and begin establishing their own lives. Much of the change is good and normal, much of it doesn't feel so good at the moment.

Immutable - what a great word - God never changes! All of His character traits have existed in all their fullness for all time and beyond time. His glorious nature does not grow or increase because it has always been full. God has been the fullest expression of goodness - always has been - always will. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus is the same - yesterday, today and forever!! As change sweeps over us there is an awesome, wondrous, ever working, never changing God that sweeps us up into Himself ... there in that place He shapes us in the change, He reassures us in the trial, He gives glimpses of His future paths which are always full of wisdom and life. Hiding from the outside change in the soothing confines of a Starbucks shop is only for a moment - the great promise as that we are hidden with Christ in God and as we walk, run or crawl through the changes - there is one unshakable place - in the arms of Jesus