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		Change is in the Air
	Christianity		Fall, 1999

Introduction

Change is always with us. Every living thing is changing. It's part of life. Your body is changing this very minute. The body you have today is not the same as the body you had yesterday, or the day before. To say "I can't change," is to say you are dead. If you say to another person "You can't change," is not so much an insult to the other person as it is saying something about yourself.

We use the word "change" in several different ways; some of them are:

	transform become different replace variety

Change is all around us. Sometimes I've heard people say, especially amongst retired folk, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." That kind of remark is said to cut off all discussion and shut everyone up. But my dear fellow Christians, we are not dogs.

Definition and Examples

Given all that as an introduction, when we face it, change is not easy. Change is hard. Doing things the same old way is easy. It is much easier to follow the rut than to get out of it. (And we all know the definition of a "rut" -- a rut is a grave with the ends knocked out. That is where we'll go when we are dead and no longer need to worry about change. -- Or will we?)

The familiar is comfortable, the new is uncomfortable. Following old habits is easy, changing course to something new is hard. I remember when we used to change the places of the cows in the barn for milking. Each cow had its place and when the cows were let into the barn, they knew where to go. When we changed their places we had commotion and pantamonium until they all found their new places. After the new places became routine again, everything would settle down.

Routine is comfortable, easy, doesn't require thought and decisions, no responsibility, just flowing along. Change is upsetting, jolting, awakening, requires attention.

What does "change" mean for a Christian?

To a Christian, change means re-new, following Paul in Ephesians, put off the old and put on the new. You know, becoming a Christian is not done all at once. We are all "becoming" successful Christians. We keep improving as Christians, one little success at a time.

I like a definition of "success" that I heard once. Success is the progressive realization of personal worthwhile goals.

We could say that being a Christian is a progressive realization of personal Christian goals.

Notice that it is "progressive realization". God isn't done with me yet. We are all a "work in progress".

These Christian goals we are working toward need to be "personal". Unless they are personal, we won't be working at them very diligently. We need to make a concentrated effort at picking these goals and making them personal to us.

Working towards a goal involves making changes. No change? No realization of a goal.

Being a Christian is a progressive realization of personal Christian goals.

There is another Christian aspect to change that I think is often ignored. I think it is so important that I am devoting an entire section to it. Let other people change.

No, I am not talking of changing other people.

I mean letting other people change. Let them change their opinions. Let them change their minds. (I've changed my mind. That's how I keep it clean, I change it often.)

One day while a professor was teaching his class he made a statement. One of the students raised his hand and said, "In your book you say something totally different." The professor responded, "Oh I know it. I changed my mind since I wrote that."

We tend to pigeon-hole people, put them into a category, and never let them out. Just because someone held a certain opinion last year doesn't mean that they hold the same opinion this year.

You've heard the expression, "Never say 'Never'." (Which is, of course, a contradiction of itself. It's like saying "Whenever you use 'always' in a sentence, the sentence is always false.") Don't say "Never" because you may change your mind. Isn't that okay? Okay for you, but not okay for your neighbor? Let him or her change his or her mind too.

This is one area where most of us can try to change. At least we can make some progressive realizations of changing. We can try not to categorize people.

Winds of Change

So the winds of change are blowing. Whether they are blowing a gale or just wafting a gentle breeze depends upon the direction you are going and how fast you are moving.

Here are a couple of stories to illustrate my point.

In one of my past careers, I taught calculus at St. John's University in Minnesota. One cold winter day, one of my students came to class and started unwrapping the scarf from around his neck, around, and around, and around. That scarf was about 6 feet long. I looked at him in amazement.

He was from a warmer climate and said, "It is so cold here. And the wind always blows from the direction I am going."

"Hmmm," I said, "If that's true, you shouldn't walk so fast."

One requirement to getting a pilot's license is to fly a long solo cross country flight. While I was on my flight, the wind came up. I was just chugging along in a little Cessna 152. When I arrived at Mid-Continent airport in Wichita, I flew the pattern and got lined up on final for a landing. The tower cleared me to land. Since we land into the wind, I am bucking this headwind. Finally, I land, taxi off the runway, and call the tower to tell them that I am down and clear. When I got inside the terminal, I phoned my instructor to tell him that I was back safely.

He asked, "What took you so long to land?' He'd been monitoring the tower frequency on his radio. "It was such a long time after they cleared you to land before you were clear of the runway."

"That headwind was so strong," I told him, "The cars on the streets of Wichita were passing me."

So, if you are resisting change and bucking the wind, similar to being out on the sea in your boat, it will seem like a wind. If you are going with the flow of change, it will be like a gentle breeze.

	Approaching Change as a Christian
	The Scripture is full of references to change, to renewal, to transformation. The Bible itself is even organized into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Whenever we pray for something, we are asking God to make a change, thus the Book of Psalms is full of change. We also need to work at evaluation of change. Not all change is good. We don't want to be so flexible that we are like "a reed shaken by the wind." and swayed by every little breeze. The evaluation and investigation is the hard part. Our hymns are also full of references to change --
	"I was blind, but now I see." "Create a new heart in me, O God." "Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth." "Bind us together, Lord." "Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me." "What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought."
	Above all, as Christians, we need to allow others to change too. Not prejudge others. Approach with an attitude of love. Accept their opinions even though ours may not coincide with theirs. Celebrate the fact that we are all different. You know that if two people are alike, one of them is unnecessary.

How to Achieve These Goals

Accepting and welcoming change as Christians cannot be isolated in a particular cubbyhole of our lives. To just the time we spend in church. Or just when we are out and about and not while we are at home. We cannot go on vacation from renewal. It must permeate all our days.

Since these goals must be "personal", each of us must set our own. Take a sheet of paper and make two columns. Label one "Put off the old" and the other "Put on the new". Now make our own personal lists.

Trying to be flexible will help us to accept change.

Try to stay out of ruts.

	When I go grocery shopping at Ley, I try to buy one item I've never tried before. I've learned many interesting new foods this way. Les likes hot sauces and the first year we lived here, I bought all manner of different picante sauces from Ley. But, we didn't like very many of them. One day I was tired of looking at all those bottles in the refrigerator -- probably 5 or 6. I put a kettle on the stove, lit a fire under it, and emptied all the bottles into it. Tasted the concoction. Added catsup, brown sugar, even a little mustard, and kept tasting it. Some onion powder, some garlic powder, more catsup, more brown sugar, some molasses. When I liked the result, I took it to Les for evaluation. He liked it so much that he keeps asking me to make some more barbeque sauce.
	I don't care for rap music. I'd pretty much closed my mind to it, and noticed that I had. So, I asked myself, "What don't I like about it?" Well, I don't care for the lyrics. So, if someone "baptized" the lyrics and brought rap music to the church, I'd try to understand it. I'd ask questions and attempt to learn more about it and try it in different forms to see if I could at least accept it even though I might not choose it myself.
	I usually don't like new clothing styles. However, I need to go shopping with a friend and try some of those new styles. When I get glowing results of approval, that becomes part of my decision.

However, sometimes, I may not even realize that I am in a rut.

And, of course, some ruts are good and we need to recognize that too. I am in this rut of going to church on Sunday morning. Deciding whether or not it is something we want to change is sometimes the hardest part of change and renewal.

... from a message I was privileged to deliver to the congregation of San Carlos Community Church.

		Pictures taken at the San Carlos Community Church on August 29, 1999
		Music on the KN5000 keyboard with words: Sing Halleluja, Family Prayer Song

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Change is in the Air