CHANGE VERSUS THE CHANGELESS

CHANGE VERSUS THE CHANGELESS

Friday, December 31, 2010

  As you can see from the above date I’ve been reviewing old DTs to again ponder lessons learned. A healthy exercise for me. I suggest that if you don’t already do so, please do so with journal, letters, clippings, scrapbook, photos et al.

EBB4 2/24/17

Matthew 6:19-34 Do not lay up treasures on earth for yourselves, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up treasures in Heaven for yourselves, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye. Therefore if your eye is sound, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, Do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Behold the birds of the air; for they sow not, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not much better than they are? Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin, but I say to you that even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much rather clothe you, little-faiths? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, With what shall we be clothed? For the nations seek after all these things. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow shall be anxious for its own things. Sufficient to the day is the evil of it.

Hebrews 6:12-20; 13:8 … be not slothful, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself, saying, "Surely in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply you." And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men truly swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. In this way desiring to declare more fully to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, God interposed by an oath, so that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil, where the Forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. … Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.

  I remember a man telling me of driving his dying Dad to his favorite view. As they sat looking thru the truck’s windshield, his Dad began to weep. “What is it Dad?” his son asked.

  Surprisingly, the reply was not much about his impending death, but that he did rue that life, though including happiness, had and was always changing for the worse.

  This past summer in answering German family member’s questions about Baltimore, I told them of changes. In 1950 the population after many years of growth was approaching one million (950,000). Then came the “White Flight” (There was also black families that could afford to that left.) resulting in estimated population 637,000 for 2009. Also, public school education taught Baltimore was 7^th busiest port in the world. Investigating today, it wasn’t listed in the top 25.

  Then recently when discussing such things, someone told me of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge having reduced a city of millions to a population of 10,000 in one day.

  In last evenings Omaha World-Herald an article related that drug cartel crime Ciudad Juarez, Mexico has reduced from 1.4 million, by an estimated 110,000 to 230,000, with more fleeing every day. It described how once vacated, thieves strip homes of everything including window panes.

  And as I sit here typing, changes are taking place everywhere. Indeed life can be good, but by and large it is a continual struggle against deterioration.

  This truth about life is not however reason to worry or despair, for there is that which will never change. Preeminently, God; and with Him in our multiple vocations – family, parent or child, friendships, home, workplace, hobby, church . . . whatever the setting or situation – is where sanctification and discipleship happens. Amen?  EBB4