The Pastor’s Perspective
Something That Doesn’t Change
Legend has it that author Lloyd C. Douglas used to visit an old man who gave violin lessons. He liked the man because, among other things, he had a kind of homey wisdom that was refreshing. One dreary morning Douglas walked in and said: “Well, what’s the good news today?” Without a word, the old man put his violin down and walked over to a tuning fork suspended from a cord and struck a smart blow. As the sound resonated in the room, he said to Douglas: “That, my friend, is the good news for today. It’s the musical note ‘A.’ It was ‘A’ all day yesterday. It will be ‘A’ next week, and it will be ‘A’ a thousand years from now.”
In a world of continuous change, it is encouraging to find something that is permanent. You do not have to be very old to look back down the road from which you came and find once-meaningful relationships which are now broken or gone. There are people who once touched our lives with grace and are no longer in sight. We know from experience that many of the people who grace our lives today will not be there tomorrow or next year, or perhaps, ever again. They will go away, or we will go away, or life will change in such ways as to make it impossible for that relationship to be graced with permanence.
There is so much in and about life that forces us to come to terms with temporariness, and yet deep in our souls, we have a penchant for something permanent. What can we count on for stability in a world where nothing seems to stay the same? Everything and everybody keeps changing, and we change too.
The truth is there is nothing permanent in the world except the intangible. Everything you can see or touch is subject to the maddening law of change. But there is an encouraging word. In the 13thchapter of First Corinthians, Paul gives a worthy list of things that will ultimately disappear. Some of them are rather important. The lofty recitation of things that will ultimately disappear ends with this sentence: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. In truth, even two of these important graces are temporal: faith and hope. They are needed only in this present life. In the world to come, faith will become knowledge, and hope will be realized. Only love will remain forever. Love is the atmosphere of heaven and the nature of God.
If love is the mood and motive of your life, then when the things of this world are swept away, you will find yourself in the kingdom of the permanent. So, make sure you anchor down on the things that are not shifting sand.
Blessings to you – Pastor Bobby
|
|
Connect
Missed this week's sermon? Need prayer? Tap an option below.
|
|
|
|
|
