"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever"
Hebrews 13:8
Change is okay. This is a sentence I wasn’t even close to being at peace with until my best friend and I had one of our 4 a.m. Jesus talks when I visited home. I didn't necessarily learn that it was okay right away; it took a lot of prayer and some time to be fully okay with it. That night I just learned that it is inevitable. Every minute something in your life changes, whether it's big or small, for the better or for worse. That night I realized I had to stop looking back, I had to stop spending all of my energy on trying to continue to live in the past. I asked myself, "How on earth am I going to live out God's plan for me if I can't even move forward with my life?"
Ever since that night it has just been a wild ride of, "Okay this happened and that's unfamiliar but I'm trusting God with it," and that has been the most freeing thing. Over time it just gets so much easier to see change and accept it. I think it gets easier because the more you start to embrace that change, the more opportunities and God moments start to arise from that change. Opportunities for friendship, opportunities to grow in your relationship with God, opportunities that you may never know about if you don’t step out of your comfort zone. From these opportunities you also may notice that even though your life's circumstances are changing, the unending grace and love from Christ has stayed the same and will always stay the same.
Isn't it amazing that literally everything in life changes except for Christ. His love for us never changes. The grace that He constantly gives us never changes. The constant and beautiful blessings He gives us continue to come even when we change. Think about it in this respect: Nowadays if something we enjoy or something we love changes, we tend to dismiss it a lot of the time. If we love McDonalds fries and they change their recipe for fries completely so that it happens to not be in our favor, we would just forget them and move on to another place. If our favorite clothing store changes their stock to fit wardrobe choices that aren't our style, we would just find another store and dismiss the old one. God sees our change, He sees our experiences, He witnesses us go against Him, make bad decisions, change our path completely, and nonetheless His love and value for us is the exact same. He doesn't just brush us off and move on to the next person, and He continues to seek out a relationship with us. How comforting is that?
Change happens. When it does we should do our best to find Christ in that change. God has new blessings for every second of your life, whether you are in middle school or college, whether you are financially struggling or rolling in cash, whether you have the same friends as you did 10 years ago or completely new ones. Instead of being down about change happening, wake up and ask for change. Ask God to continue to change your life for the better and look at each new experience as a way to further your relationship with Him and spread His word. Get excited about change in your life, when God closes one door, four more open. Find peace in the fact that in the midst of the changing storms of life, you can forever count on Him because He never changes.
