Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9 (NIV)
Change.
It’s usually something we endure, and not all that well. Perhaps it would be a whole lot easier for us to endure if we knew what life looked like at the end of the change.
Contrary to the normal human condition in the midst of change, our son and daughter-in-law and two Granddaughters are doing pretty well in the midst of a change going on in their lives—moving from what they know to what they know less. They are making a change in their lives after almost nine years of calling Tampa their home. Leaving a neighborhood, friends, church, and other familiar people and places to move back to where their relationship began and family lives.
Webster’s New World dictionary defines “change” as:
“A changing or being changed; a substitution, alteration, or variation. Variety. Something that is or may be substituted; something of the same kind but new or fresh…To put or take (a thing) in place of something else; substitute…”
Or, as most of us see it, to go from the comfortable and certain to the uncomfortable and uncertain.
Define it any way you like—it seldom seems easy to wander through. No matter our age, we’re not quite as malleable as we’d like to believe we are. We don’t often like the idea of feeling like clay in the Potter’s hands. And so we tend to rebel, push back against, run from, or attempt to stall any change knocking on the front doors of our lives.
Maybe it’s because we’ve been burned before with another change in our lives. Maybe we’re wondering “what’s the point” since our best days are probably behind us. Maybe we’re running on empty, exhausted, feeling used-up, finished, defeated or “retired.” Maybe a relationship has changed or will. Maybe an illness has reared its unwelcome head once again. Maybe we’re just afraid to leave the temporal security of our man-made existence. Maybe we feel like we’re being called to a place where not only can’t we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we can’t find the tunnel. Maybe, for whatever reason, at this point in our lives, we find ourselves struggling simply with changing from one day to the next.
And then, maybe—it’s because we worry more than we trust.
Maybe—as a friend put it recently—it’s because in the midst of whatever change is going on in our lives, we tend to forget to trust the “hidden hand of God” which is guiding and directing the change for His glory and our ultimate good.
That “hidden hand of God” which will forever hold all the paintbrushes and paints and—with an earthly and eternal vision so much higher and greater than anything we could ever envision—is standing over each of us and the yet unfinished canvas of our lives. The “hidden hand of God”—with new and changing brushstrokes and colors—continuing to paint the portrait of all He intends for our lives to be, and the impact He intends for them to have now and forever.
The “hidden hand of God” which is still at work molding the legacy of our lives which will provide the answer and insight into what your life and mine meant…while we were here.
What change are you facing in your life? Maybe you’re moving into another job, or into more treatment for an illness which has returned. Maybe you’re experiencing a change in a life-long relationship, or perhaps a child is going off to school and the “empty nest” you have heard so much about has found a home in yours. Maybe, like our children are doing this week, you’re moving, or just moving into another day?
I don’t know what changes you’re facing. But no matter the changes going on in your life, may I suggest that you approach them with the belief that they are an opportunity to reconnect anew and afresh with the “hidden hand of God.” May it be a time where you allow the “hidden hand of God” to mold you more and more into all He intends for you to be.
And just perhaps—in the midst of the change you are facing or going through—it will be a time where you will see the “hidden hand of God” continuing to paint the canvas He envisions which is your life—into the masterpiece He intended it to be when He created you.
The “hidden hand of God”—something in which you and I can trust, in the midst of all the change in everyday of our lives.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2009. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
