Life Change and Our Sovereign God

“As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. . . . And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.”

Willa Cather’s epic novel, My Ántonia, describes the experience of several pioneering families, who settled the tall-grass prairie of south central Nebraska. She portrays the land as immense and energetic and in some sense, foreshadowing the kind of energy and labor required to change the wild landscape into cultivated fields.

Change is never easy, yet change is necessary, and good things happen that would otherwise not occur. Recently our family experienced a few changes. We have moved from the State of Washington to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; we left an historic house that was called Terre Firma and now live in a fairly new, well-kept townhouse in a development; I have changed from being employed in a seminary in the Northwest to being employed at Calvary Baptist Seminary; we have embraced and said our good-byes to friends in one ministry, and have embraced and exchanged warm greetings with friends in a new ministry; we have taken our last child to college and returned to an “emptier” house filled with unpacked boxes. The suddenness of it all still leaves one a bit dazed.

But change should be no stranger to the Christian. Our sovereign God, who does not change, frequently uses change in circumstances to be a catalyst for a greater work: His transformation of our character. Change then becomes the occasion for us to renew our resolve, put our hand to the plow, and undergo the Spirit’s “cultivation” of our lives as we follow Jesus.