Sorting Out The God Changes

Change is a constant. The Greeks were right.   We never step in the same river twice. The consistency and the rapidity of the change that surrounds me is like a current of a river. The time floats by and the river runs and I am really unaware of the changes. They are gradual but ceaseless.

In the middle of all that change I am not left unchanged. My experience, my hope, my relationship to the people that surround me changes a bit each day. Almost unnoticed and at the same time it is cumulative. The people and events that I hold on to as a kind of hedge against the flow are themselves swept along with the currents that move us and shape us at the same time.

It is within this context, that I establish and maintain a measure of spiritual formation and discipline. Knowing me, I am sure that it is somehow reactive, fragmented, eclectic and iconic. I am so much a product of the change that has shaped me and of my reactions to it. My spiritual formation and discipline are the same way.

Do I believe that in the middle of all this change that God is at work within me, forming me, and shaping me by the experiences, the books that he sends my way and the interactions that he allows to occur? Yes but like the river of time and change that I float in, I am so often unaware of the change until it cumulatively is brought to my attention. That more than any other single thing is what I hope for during these days. The hope and the prayer that forms within me is that in the middle of this ceaseless, never ending change that flows around me, and through me that God will work his will out within me.

Philippians 2:12-14 (NASB)

 12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

That really is it in a nutshell. God is at work. I don't always know it...and really I would be reactive to it if I were always aware of it. So at times I am surrendering in advance of the outcome that he knows but I don't. Back to the river that I never step in twice...

Lord Jesus let your river of grace sweep around me and through me, you have me at this corner for a reason. Continue that your work within me.