Our Ever-Changing, Never-Changing World

In its simplest form, change is one of two things: beneficial or harmful. One need only turn the pages of a history book to see the benefits of change over time. Consider the following three areas where great change has occurred …

• Travel from  Boston to New York City took the traveler of the early 1800s about three days to complete, and that was when the trip held no setbacks due to broken wagon wheels, a sick animal or the death of a fellow traveler. Today, a jetliner can carry passengers from California to New York in just over five hours. 
• In 1930 the average income of the hard-working individual was $1,970.00 for the entire year.  If a family wished to purchase a new vehicle in the midst of the Depression,  it would cost them around $640.00, or a third of that year’s total earnings. Fast-forward to the year 2000, where the average income for one year’s work was $40,393.00. If one tried to live on a 1930s income in the 21st century, they would have enough money to live comfortably for about two and a half weeks!
• New discoveries in medical care have changed the very fabric of life in our country. In 1900, a full 1/3 of all deaths recorded were those of children under age five. Ninety-seven years later, only 1% of all deaths were those of children under  five years of age. But if change in the field of medicine had not occurred, and the same death rates had continued, the number of children dying before their fifth birthday in 1997 would have been around 500,000!

Change can be a very beneficial thing—our very existence can depend upon it. Yet there are some things that will never change in this ever-changing world…

Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instruct you, as well as their truthfulness. There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself. Hebrews 13: 7-8

It brings peace to the soul of the believer to know that  Jesus will never change: His love for us, His power  and the truth that He is God’s Son and the world belongs to Him.  Another unchangeable truth is  God’s Word. Every letter within its pages  is truth that will  never change: reaping what one sows, the law of giving and receiving, the temporal life on earth that is a mere puff of smoke, and the choice to serve God willingly or bow the knee in eternity. These are not popular realities, but they are never-changing truths set by the very Words of God.

Heaven and earth [as now known] will pass away, but My words will not pass away. Matthew 24:35