Change.

Change!  It’s all around us.  As I look in the mirror each morning, I am aware that I have changed from the fresh-faced young man I was forty years ago!  Relationships change – I have friends now whom I didn’t even know a few years ago; there are others with whom, over the years, I have lost contact.  Governments change; jobs change; environments change; the state of our health changes. 
 
The hymn-writer, Henry Francis Lyte, penned these well-known words in 1847, while he lay dying from tuberculosis (he died only three weeks later): “Change, and decay, in all around I see.  O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me.”    What he was saying, as one who was a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, is what followers of the Christ maintain even today - that in a world of change, He is the unchanging One; that He is, as the writer of the letter to Jewish disciples of Jesus puts it, “... the same, yesterday, today, and for ever.” (Heb.13:8) 

In a world of change, I find that to be a great encouragement!

Of course,the Bible speaks about another change.  Writing to the fellowship of believers in the Roman colonial city of Philippi, Paul states that "... our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power which enables Him even to subject all things to Himself." (Phil 3:20-21; RSV).  That's a change that will come to every true servant of Jesus at the moment of death, or rapture - whichever should occur first.  "... in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ..." (I Cor 15:52; RSV), the spirit passes through that veil that separates time from eternity - that veil that is finer than gossamer, yet stronger than anything of which the mind of mortal man is capable of conceiving.  It is then that the disciple of Jesus will, I firmly believe, meet with the Saviour, face-to-face; in a body that is free from sin; in that city that "... has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb." (Rev 21:23; RSV).

That's a change worth anticipating!