Monday, November 12, 2012

Unchanging


When things are going well, it is easy to profess that God is always God and that He is faithful and unchanging, but do we believe that when tragedy strikes? Do we believe that when our world comes crashing in? Do we believe that when the healing we beg for never comes? I can tell you personally that the day I got the phone call telling me that I had lost my first baby, I didn't believe that God was unchanging, I didn't believe that He was good, I didn't believe that He was faithful; My view of God suddenly changed into this big, cold man who didn't care what happened to me or my child, I became quite indifferent to Him. Fortunately for me, God was NOT who I thought He was, fortunately He still offered me enough grace and mercy to cover my doubts, to give me time to come back to Him, to let me rediscover exactly who He was. When tragedy strikes our life, I think it is a knee jerk reaction to blame God, to rethink who He is, to mistrust Him and His plans, but does this actually change who He is? Does this make Him a different person? No, we only perceive Him as being different, because suddenly our world has been turned upside down and we can't imagine that God could let that happen to us, that a good God would allow bad things to happen to His followers. God has made many promises to us, one of those promises is that He is unchanging (“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed." Malachi 3:6) and we know that He is unchanging,  because in those moments of doubt, when we question who He is, when we are convinced that He no longer covers us with His love or protects us, He is giving us more grace than we ever thought we needed, He is providing great mercy to us so that we may find our way back to Him, to that place where we do believe that He is constant and unchanging. Always hold on to the truth that in those moments when we are convinced that God has changed, He is ready to show us just how unwavering He is.