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God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
-- Psalm 46:1

We have a bath shower in our house, and as with most showers, it has a water pressure problem. You get in it, adjust the water to a comfortable temperature, and suddenly your wife turns on the washing machine in the basement. The shower becomes freezing as you frantically try to adjust the tap. Then, just as you get things fixed, the washer cuts off and you're scalded! Life is like that, isn't it? Just as you get settled, just as you get used to things, something changes and you're made uncomfortable. An adjustment is called for!

What does the Bible have to say about change? What is the Christian attitude toward a world that is in flux? Our two texts deal with this subject, so let us delve into them and glean their meaning.

Never Stays The Same!
The first text, Psalm 46, tells us that the earth is a place of change. People, places, and things never stay the same. The psalmist points out that the "mountains shake," "waters roar and foam," "kingdoms totter," and wars come and go. Our world is still like this. Presidents, dictators, and kingdoms still rise and fall. The earth still quakes, old familiar landmarks are torn down, children grow up and move on, rivers are dammed, ministers come and go, good friends die, and people move.

Isn't it extraordinary that the Bible was written by real people living in the real world? It was not written from some stained-glass fantasy. Nor was it written from some Eiffel Tower of idealism. It was written by common men in this tender, brutal world. Because of this, it speaks eloquently to our needs if we but listen. Certainly one of our needs is a way of coping with change. If I had to list five main things that are destroying the earth today, I'd have to list rust, frost, wind, water, and pollution. But if I had to list five main things that are destroying peoples' lives, I'd have to list inability to adapt to change right up there with alcohol, money, pride, and selfishness. Change is devastating people! Because they can't cope with flux, their brittle lines are being snapped! A man loses his job, refuses to adjust, and quits at life. A couple's best friends get transferred, adjustments are called for, yet they are not willing to try. A mother's children grow up, leave home, and she is now empty.

There is always the human tendency to feel singled out, to feel that we alone live in a world of constant change, to feel that no one else has it hard like we do. The following is a bit of verse written by one such individual:

To whom can I speak today?
The gentle man has perished,
The violent man has access to everybody.
To whom can I speak today?
The iniquity that smites the land,
It has no end.
To whom can I speak today?
There are no righteous men,
The earth is surrendered to criminals.

I suppose you're thinking that this lament must have been written by some New Yorker during the recent winter. No, it was written in Egypt 4,000 years ago by a man contemplating suicide. Singled out? Are we the only ones who've known a world of upheavals and change? No, this Egyptian felt it. The psalmist wrote about it and we know it, too. A French adage says, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." As it was in Egypt, so it is today.

The fact is that we live in a world of change. The question is, how do we react to these changes? A fellow got into a Washington, DC, taxi recently and said, "Driver, drive me back about twenty years!" Nostalgia is one way of dealing with flux. Complaining is another. "They don't make 'em like they used to!" "Back in my day...." "Ah, but those were the good old days, now, it's not so good!" "The world's going to the dogs!" Complain, complain, complain! One lady in her eighties, rigid and conservative about many things that the scriptures aren't even conservative about, had become cynical with modern life and the changes it brought. "Pastor," she whined, "it's a good time to be dead!"

Here's a little poem about the past. I think you'll agree that it rubs a little luster off the "good old days gone by."

Grandmother, on a winter's day
Milked the cows and fed them hay
Slopped the hogs, saddled the mule,
And got the children off to school
Did the washing, mopped the floors,
Washed the windows and did some chores;
Cooked a dish of home dried fruit,
Pressed her husband's Sunday suit;
Swept the parlor, made the beds,
Baked a dozen loafs of bread;
Split some firewood and lugged in
Enough to fill the kitchen bin;
Cleaned the lamps and put in oil,
Stewed some apples she thought would spoil.
Cooked a supper that was delicious,
And afterwards washed up the dishes;
Fed the cat and sprinkled the clothes,
Mended a basket full of hose,
Then opened the organ and began to play,
"When you come to the end of a perfect day."
-- Author unknown

I like that! It says it all! Contentment! Hard work in the present! Hearing about Grandma's winter day makes your back ache a bit, too, doesn't it? It makes one begin to think that maybe the good old days weren't so good after all! Who'd like to go back and relive the '60s with its Vietnam and riots? Or what about the '50s? Would you really like to return to the Jim Crow laws and Korea? What about the '40s and Hitler or the '30s and the Depression? What about the Roaring '20s? Would you like to go back there and allow a dentist to work on your tooth? What about a decade before that? Let's see, that was World War I, wasn't it?

God Is In Control!
Yes, we live in a world of change. The psalmist points this out with his view of quaking mountains, surging tides, and tottering kingdoms. "The earth melts," he says. But our songwriter is quick to point out one clear and unchanging fact in this ever-changing world: God is in control. The psalmist says that the Lord can utter his voice and wars cease. He can break kingdoms, totter empires, and be in the midst of his people so that they shall not be moved. "I am exalted among the nations," God says. "I am exalted in the earth!" he exclaims.

Seeing such a God and believing his promises, the wordsmith of the psalms said, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change." The psalmist had serenity about life and death and violence and change. We seem to have never found such contentment. My, my, how we can worry! How we can grumble and wax nostalgically, and what bitter cynics we can become!

Do you remember how it was when you were first married? You were afraid of your spouse's driving, weren't you? Every time you traveled, you made it a practice to take the wheel. They might take a wrong turn or run off the road or fail to note an instrument's warning. But then came that long journey, too long for you to drive it alone. They'd have to share the driving responsibilities with you. Remember how it was with them behind the wheel? Dog-tired as you were, you couldn't relax. You felt compelled to be a backseat driver. "Does she see that stop sign?" "Watch out for that cow!" "Slow down here!" Finally, fatigue outlasted you and you fell asleep to dream of fears and disasters, hardships and breakdowns. Then your wife woke you up with a shake to tell you that you had arrived safely at your destination. After a few trips like that, you began to believe in your wife's driving ability! Now you suspect that the old girl is a better driver than you! A lot of people go through life a backseat driver. They are full of anxiety because they don't trust God's ability. In the text, the psalmist was willing to leave the driving to God. He trusted the Lord's ability to remain in control of situations. He wasn't like so many of us, afraid to relax, afraid to sleep, for fear of what change might bring. He wasn't forever hitting the brakes, backseat driving, and fretting, "Slow down!" What about you? Can you sleep while your wife drives? Better still, can you relax with God at the wheel of the universe?

T.S. Eliot compared God to the North Star. Against a canopy of constellations in flux the North Star is a fixed point useful for navigation. Eliot wrote saying, "He is the still point of the turning world." The psalmist found that still point. He could confidently whisper, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change." Perhaps the psalmist sensed our lack of adjustment, our tense response to the difference a day makes, for he turns to us in his psalm and speaks a word of God. "Be still. Be still and know that I am God." Aye! Here's a word for us! We've been so busy in our haste to live at top speed socially and economically that we've left our souls behind. That still point in a turning world, that pole star to chart our course by, is lost to our view. How do we find it? "Be still." Quit your selfish haste, your frantic worrying, that foolish rigidity! "Be still and know. Know that I am God. I make wars to cease. I burn the chariots of battle and totter kingdoms. With me as your refuge you shall not be moved!"

Martin Luther loved this psalm. He used it as the basis for his hymn, "A Mighty Fortress." In times of stress he'd say, "Let's go sing Psalm 46!" Along with Dr. Luther and the psalmist, we can say, "This! This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). With God at the wheel of the universe, we can relax. He's in control.

Make Change!
Yes, the world is changing, and yes, God is in control. We are also told that Christians should cause change. To his followers throughout history, Jesus Christ said, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." This verse is known as the Great Commission. You are aware of how a king will commission an artist to do a sculpture. He will give him a block of marble and say, "Create for me a statue of David," and Michelangelo will go to work changing that stone into artistic splendor. With God and us it is the same. The Lord commissions us, his artists, to preach the gospel, to baptize in the Holy Spirit, and to teach all nations to observe God's law. He commissions us to win people to Christ. These then changed people will change the world!

During my college days in the 1960s, I studied in England. While in London, I applied for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. I wanted to leave in two weeks. The agent at the Russian Embassy told me that it was impossible to gain a visa in two weeks. Still, I insisted that I try. He gave me the papers and I filled them out. One question said, "Occupation?" I didn't want to put Christian minister because that would be frowned on, I thought, by Russian officials. So, brash as I was, I simply wrote down "Revolutionary." I got the visa a week later. Looking back now on that question, "What is your occupation?" I feel that my answer may have been more correct than I first thought. I am a revolutionary! All Christians are. I'm committed to death to preach the gospel. I am committed with fervent zeal to bringing people into a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ. I am committed to changing families, morals, politics, and society the world over -- starting with myself.

The Bible teaches that God created the universe in six days. On day seven he rested. But then creation rebelled against the Lord and fell to pieces like a shattered mirror. But now Jesus says, "My Father is working still" (John 5:17). Day seven is over! God no longer rests. This is the eighth day of creation. Christ is at work restoring humanity's broken relationship with God, self, neighbor, and creation. Our Father is working still. He's not satisfied with the world as it is, and he invites us, through the Great Commission, to work with him to change the world.

Let's face it. The church has fallen short here. The church too often fights change rather than makes change. The church can become a protector of the status quo, a defender of only the kings on the mountains. But God's will is not just to keep things the way they are right now. Sure, the world has been good to us. We're Americans. We've got food and jobs and health and power. We even know something of Jesus. But we are a minority here on earth. For the majority of humanity, there is little food, poor health, inadequate shelter, and no chance to hear the gospel. Hence, God commissions us to work with him as change agents.

Look at it this way. There can be no life without growth. Progress, maturity, improvements, development -- all these things are impossible without change. This world today, even at its best, is still substandard. God is not satisfied with it the way it is. He calls us out of our stained glass fox holes, our bastions of nostalgia, our snugness as a bug-in-a-rug in the status quo, and he says, "Christian, make change! Work with me to make this world better until Christ returns to make it the best it can be!"

A notable Ivy League college president once said, "I divide the people of the world into three categories. There is a group of people that watch things happen. There is the overwhelming majority that doesn't even know what is happening. There is that small committed minority that makes things happen." We Christians have not been called to the status quo, nor have we been called to ignorance or apathy. We belong to that small committed minority that makes change for the better happen.

You Can't Beat It! Join It!
In a Peanuts cartoon, Snoopy is moping atop his doghouse. "I feel it," he says. "I feel it. Change is in the air." Then a golden leaf falls from a tree and Snoopy is quick up to catch it. Another leaf falls and then another and another and another. Snoopy is frantic. He tries to blow the leaves back up in the air. After a futile hour's work Snoopy sighs and returns to his doghouse. "Oh, well," he says. "Winter will come. Change is inevitable." What about you? Are you like Snoopy? Are you wishing for a world that does not exist, that never changes? God has not given us such a home! Change is a fact of life. You can't beat it, but you can join it! With Christ, we can return again to the cutting edge of society. With the psalmist, we can talk about the good now days! "This! This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it," as we make change!


Suggested Prayer
Father God, let me remember that to be loud is not to be right; to be strange is not to be forbidden; to be new is not to be frightful. Lord, grant me the courage to change the things that need changing, the serenity to accept the things that do not need changing, and the wisdom to know the difference. For Christ's sake. Amen.