Change -Part 2

These past few days I have been listening to a track which has long been a favourite. It is a song about change and one that played a significant role in the civil rights movement of the 60’s in the USA. I’m sure many will recognise it as Sam Cook’s “A change is gonna come”. The change Cook was looking for was societal and cultural. He wrote the lyrics out of his personal experience of constantly been treated as less than a second class citizen. He was of course, an African American, living in a time of appalling segregation.

Change! Many will say we have had enough change to last a life time. These past two - three years has been nothing but change and look, here we are! We have come through it, changed in the process but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Change is the one thing we are guaranteed in life. But how often do we fight against it? We so much want change, normally in others, but when it comes to ourselves there can be a reticence. Herein lies the challenge. The key, however, lies not so much i the change itself but in how we respond.

As followers of Jesus our goal is to become “more like Jesus”, and if this is going to happen it will take change. Paul writes to the Roman church:

“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5 3-5 NLT)

If we allow God to use the challenges, the problems and the changes around us we find the core of our being, our character develops. These moments become moments of transformation. Change develops our character and, as Paul writes, character produces hope, a hope that does not disappoint. This character is one developed and distilled in the crucible of life. A whole person becoming more like Jesus every day.

Change also provides us with the opportunity to be change for others. Somewhere and sometime in our lives someone reached out to us and, as a result things were turned around for us. Hope was offered, perspective given and maybe a new opportunity opened up. Cook wrote in the chorus of his song:

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes it will

Change is “a comin” . Welcome it. Accept the invitation contained therin. Be it. And may you know and express a hope birthed in character.