Sing the Changes!

August 1, 2010

Sizzling hot tamales, people! We’ve moved from the oven to the skillet in Kentucky this month! And I’ve gone from a baked brain to a stir-fried soul. So much has happened, I nearly forgot to doodle down my thoughts. But here I am, at the last minute, attempting to squirt some semi-coherent words into a pattern of sorts for the doodleheads out there to read.

What has jumbled up my life this past month can be explained in one nasty little word: change. Now don’t get me wrong. I like variety in life. The same old same old can get downright boring. But major changes affecting people I love, I don’t like so much.

Some special friends and their triplets, whom I nannied for the first five years of their lives, moved out of state. I’m sure this will turn out to be a good change for them, but for me, it leaves a hole in my heart. Then another friend with major health issues, incurred an injury that will make her life more difficult for at least a couple of months, if not longer. And that troubles me. Then to top it all off, there have been changes at church that I don’t really understand.

So I’ve been wondering what all this means. God must be up to something, and it must be good, but how come I’m not feeling it? Why am I not just chomping at the bit to see what comes next, instead of wishing things would go back to the way they were?

Maybe I don’t like change, because I know it often travels hand in hand with pain, and I don’t like pain! Not for me, and not for anyone I care about. I know that if I just go with the flow and let God work through the changes, blessings I never imagined will come out of them. In 1 Peter 1:3-9, it says:

> Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Well then, I guess I can stand a little toppling of my happy apple cart in exchange for “inexpressible and glorious joy.” That doesn’t sound like a bad deal at all. I just need to go with the griefs when they come, holding onto the merciful, unchanging God until “joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

And the Lord seems to have a way of showering joy down on us even in the midst of the “blecks.” When we bought tickets back in early June to see Paul McCartney in concert, I had no idea how much I would be needing a little perking up at the end of July. But God knew. And he blessed me once again with a night of WooHoo excitement and great music. Paul even sang one of his newer songs called, “Sing the Changes.”

Some would call that a coincidence. I call it a God thing.

Keep smiling through the heat. Showers of blessing are on the way!