"Bob Dylan once wrote, "The times, they are a' changin'" but Ron Burgundy had never heard that song..."
Change. I'm convinced it's been utilized by both God and the Devil since the fallout between them. It's as if that event played a major part in their history, making them intent that it should play a part in ours, and there's no question that it has.
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."- Anatole France
It's a strange concept, sure, but frighteningly true. Change is one of the battlegrounds that God and Satan do war on. It's a homefront for both sides; inevitable in either sense, but combated nonetheless. What I mean by that is this: if I'm called by God to drastically change something in my life, I feel fear from Satan holding me back; if I try to move away from God and pursue my earthly desires, I feel the pull of God that we all too often ignore. The fact of the matter is this: we were born to fight it, no matter the source, but in the end we were made to accept one thing--change will happen. Many times it will tear us apart internally, cause us to question the Author of Life, ourselves, and those around us. It will compromise our understanding of the way the world works, take a piece of our lives that will never be returned, or possibly leave little impact at all. From situation to situation the grievances vary, but Robert C. Gallagher said it best in this statement that the only constant is this, "Change is inevitable- except from a vending machine."
We as people, but more specifically in this instance, followers of Christ, are so concerned with the ritual and repetition of our "religion" that when the inevitable changes of life confront us, whether they be of Satan or God, we either run from the calling to cower and hide, or destroy the shallow relationship we may have developed through routine, only to leave ourselves worse off then we were before.
A belief in Christ does not carry some shackled commitment to legalism, to locking ourselves away from the world, but freedom. Freedom to be in the world but not of the world; freedom to live, striving for perfection and holiness, but to know that when we fall we have the continuing grace of a loving God to pick us up and direct us back to the path. A belief in Christ frees us from being slaves to routine and places us joyfully in the midst of the chaos and the change of the world. Just like death, change has lost its sting; because no matter how difficult, drastic, or life-altering it may be, we don't have to bear it alone.
"Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril."- Laurens van der Post
"Time is a dressmaker specializing in alternations."- Faith Baldwin
"If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing."- Saint Augustine
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