When change in your life seems drastic
A Christian Science perspective.
It might be change on the micro level. A revamping of policy at your office, a change that suddenly leaves you displaced, feeling purposeless, or perhaps most unsettling, jobless. Or, it might be a change on the macro level. Perhaps the upheaval that has roared through someone’s life and changed just about everything for the worse was triggered by extreme weather such as hurricane Irene. For at least some people that has meant temporary homelessness, or worse. What do you do when the change in your life looks drastic?
For starters, you can affirm that God doesn’t “do” drastic. That is, He doesn’t cause or allow that which is destructive. The changeless God, divine Truth, is steadfastly at work. The God that is purely, unvaryingly good is in force. If it appears otherwise, then some prayerful protesting is in order. This protest is a mental and spiritual rebellion against the notion that there could be drastic change that is somehow bigger than the infinite God of unchanging good. Nothing outsizes or outpowers the Divine.
The Old Testament prophet Malachi may have glimpsed this to some degree when he recorded God, divine good, as saying, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (3:6). That is the central reality to which all other concerns must ultimately conform.
What does it mean for God to be changeless good? It means His love is unchanging. His provision is unchanging. His power and care for each of His offspring, including you, are unchanging. It means there is a continuity to the nature of divine good that rules out the possibility of steady blessings somehow becoming unsteady, or reliable certainties suddenly becoming unreliable. It means the one and only God that says, “I change not” is also the God that keeps His promises.
There is more to that Bible verse, though, than the promise of changeless Truth. The Almighty adds, “therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Could a person’s hopes and dreams really be consumed, really be devoured by doubts or fears or mistimed moves in the market or sudden, so-called natural disasters? Sometimes it surely looks that way. And yet in this passage God comforts His people, assuring them that they will not be consumed. We can take Him at His word and affirm His healing comfort is already at hand, right where disaster appears to be.
To do so is to pray. Prayer, based on the understanding of God’s unchanging goodness and love, makes a transforming difference. What the Bible labels the promised “Comforter” Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy termed “divine Science.” She advised, speaking of the “how” of prayer, “Plead with an honest conviction of truth and a clear perception of the unchanging, unerring, and certain effect of divine Science” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 418).
Anyone can follow this instruction. Stick with the perception that divine Science – the Comforter that comes from God to us – has an unchanging effect. Realize that the Comforter has changeless assurance for you. Claim a victory over the notion that drastic changes could lay waste to your life. God’s changeless goodness then will prevail.
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