Changes

Autumn always finds me in a melancholy mood. There is a greater sense of the passing of time. I understand Yeats’s poem “When you are old and gray and full of sleep” better than ever because many days that’s exactly who I am and how I feel.

I gravitate toward poetry at these times. Recently I read Ozymandias (otherwise known as Ramses II) by the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, which describes a traveler discovering a once dominating statue of the Egyptian king surveying his kingdom; the irony is, of course, that centuries later, nothing remains but a broken statue and endless seas of sand. From Yeats I read one of the most melancholy poems ever, The Wild Swans at Coole. The speaker visits a place to which he returns every autumn. This particular year he notices that, instead of sixty swans, there are only “nine and fifty.” Swans mate for life, so the number is significant because it indicates change.

I look at the changes in my life over the past few years. Somehow my infant granddaughters are sixteen, twelve, and seven. I wonder how that happened. I lost my beloved husband Wayne, but six years later, married Michael, who is the perfect man to have in my life at this season. I have been active in church but realize there is a time to give those younger than I their chance to serve. I still see friends of forty plus years, and although we don’t have as many parties as we once had, our times together are always joyous. Even as I have an acute awareness of the blessings that can come with changes, I realize the years before me are much fewer than those behind me.

Yes, there is a melancholy in me this autumn, so I began to search Scripture to find something to lift me out of this funk. It did not take long. I first turned to the poetry of the Psalms and quickly saw affirmations of God’s faithfulness, of His immutability and steadfastness. Even as I have changed, God has not. The psalmist in 136:2-3 declares, “O give praise to the God of gods: for his loyal love endures. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his loyal love endures.” In case you missed it, that phrase appears in all twenty-six verses (NET).

From the Old Testament to the New, the writers, inspired by Holy Spirit, affirm God’s changelessness. Numbers 23: 19 proclaims, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a human being, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoke, and will he not make it happen?” God keeps his promises—to His people, to me! After putting Daniel in the lion’s den, then seeing Daniel unharmed the next morning, King Darius issues an edict that his people are to “revere and fear the God of Daniel. ‘For his is the living God; he endures forever. His kingdom will not be destroyed; his authority is forever’” (Daniel 6: 26 NET). As God keeps his promises, even unbelievers recognize God’s timeless righteousness! In Psalm 102: 27, a man, whom the NET describes as oppressed, finds solace in verse 27: “But you (God) remain; your years do not come to an end.”
The assurance of God’s faithfulness and steadfastness is demonstrated in the person of Jesus Christ. We are familiar with the passage from Hebrews which states, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (8: 13). Peter reminds us that we have been made “imperishable…through the living and enduring word of God” (23). Jesus Christ—the living and enduring Word of God! Finally the familiar words from Revelation attest to God’s eternal nature when the “one seated on the throne” declares, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (21: 6).

Right now, it seems like my life takes a new turn or encounters a new circumstance every day. Change and the unexpected are everywhere. So it is for our church in some ways. We encounter changes in sudden or unexpected repairs, changes in attendance as some of our saints depart and others, often younger than our average attendee, join us. It is easy to find ourselves in constant adjustments. At times like these, I find great comfort in turning to the One Who is changeless, immutable, in His faithfulness and steadfastness. Thanks be to God.