Early into my time at Tyndale, I found myself overwhelmed, overworked and overtired…
The school had just moved away from Bally Connor and settling into the new Bayview campus was clearly going to take some time. My favorite part of this new location was that there was so much nature to enjoy… when you walked far enough from whatever the ongoing construction projects were, of course.
I had made my way down to the stream at the bottom of the property and was listening to music/complain-rant journaling. I wrote furiously until I felt I had gotten everything out of my system.
Then God began to speak.
“One of the things you can always depend on and be absolutely certain of in this life, is change.”
He spoke to me about the seasons and showed me how necessary it is for creation itself to experience change. He spoke to me about our bodies and about how if they never changed, something would actually be wrong with them. He began to show me the beauty of the thing I was most afraid of in that moment… and my heart towards change itself, began to change.
If I were to say, “Jesus is the same…”, many of you would instinctively complete that sentence with: “…yesterday, today and forever”. That verse is found in Hebrews 13:8 and has been one of the ways I ground myself in times of overwhelming change.
God didn’t speak to me that day about depending on change because it would somehow be the thing to tether me in life… he redeemed an area of my life that was causing me stress and anxiety. And while he was ministering to my fear, he showed me the importance of having my foundation built on Jesus!
I learned more about him that day by him teaching me about his opposite… My trust and dependence can rest firmly on him because in a world of swirling changes and seasons he remains steadfast.
His love for me N E V E R ends!!
If anything, I’d say that Jesus keeps on getting better! If there are any changes to Jesus, I think they look like us gaining deeper understandings of who he is and what his grace & mercy actually look like!
All of us have endured more sudden and disruptive changes in the past three months than we ever could have imagined… and in order for things to re-settle and to find their new normal, even more changes must occur. Which will also prove to be difficult at times.
My prayer for all of us, is that in the midst of COVID seasons changing, even as they change for the better, that we would not lose heart! That instead, our roots would grow down even deeper into the love of our Father, that we would cling even closer to our Saviour and that we would depend on his very Spirit which is alive in each of us!
I’ll let Paul close us off with one of his most well-known prayers (Ephesians 3:14-21)…
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth
is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend
with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.