While I’ve got a sweet moment with a daughter winding an old music box up again, and again, there are teenage boys creating the sounds of hardcore punk in the basement.   Last year they didn’t even know how to pick up a guitar – this is change. Where I used to decide everything from what’s on the menu to what will be worn to school I’m at the parenting stage where everything is up for negotiation and discussion.

The grocer flyers I read are arriving on the internet and while half the world’s population has still not had the privilege of making a phone call, I’m trying to figure out how to keep track of seven different phone, fax, cell and email lines that send communication to me.

Now that I’ve had my little rant out about how I would rather resist change than embrace it, what is a person with a spiritual perspective to conclude about change?

Change and innovation is part of the character of God.  The Bible promises the future is going to hold a radically new picture, where everything will be recreated as we know it.  We can’t comprehend what vision God has for the human race, but I have to conclude that if change is part of the character of God, it must be part of my character as well.

Change can spell hope.  Change is an integral component of both biological and spiritual growth.  It’s easy to embrace that growth when change brings welcome benefits, but often change appears with a grey cloud over the future.   A life threatening diagnosis, a relationship that crumbles, a death.   It’s how we handle the bad things, not just the good that will determine our future.   The change that is unwelcome can make or break us through the reactions we bring to it, so bring hope.  Ask someone you trust if the change is making you bitter, or better.  Find out what you are not handling well, and grow away from negativity.

Be patient about how long it will take to adapt to the change you did not want, but you must live through.  I recently spent a weekend with one of North America’s top motivational speakers and I was eager to hear how she had adjusted to her recent widowhood, and her battle with breast cancer.  Privately she looked me in the eye and said,  “I won’t be saying a word about that – I’m not ready.”

Publicly, she held audiences’ spell bound and laughing about her content from life’s earlier lessons, but she was still waiting to see beauty and growth in her current pain. She trusted God would be faithful to work everything for her good as the Bible promises, but she was ploughing through the growing stage, taking time to let hope mature with unforced blossoms of beauty.

Amid change, make your values the same things God values.  I enjoyed watching Cast Away – the hit movie that is an epic struggle about a world changing.  In the end, the lead character must decide what is the best moral choice for his future.   His persistence was matched by his
 integrity; he lived by the right choice.  We have to be rock solid and unchanging about our cores values of what’s right, what’s wrong.  For the New Year ahead of us and the obvious that change will be part of it, here's cheers to making the best of it.