Change

Change!  It’s all around us.  As I look in the mirror each morning, I am aware that I have changed from the fresh-faced young man I was forty years ago!  Relationships change – I have friends now whom I didn’t even know a few years ago; there are others with whom, over the years, I have lost contact.  Jobs change – and that is as true in the Force as in any other occupation.  Indeed, one of the things that I realised, early in my time as a Chaplain, is that the one consistency in the Force is - change!   I am aware of the changes in job specs, and in the number of civilian staff, certainly in my own Force, who have found it necessary to move from a position in which they were more than content, just in order to provide a greater measure of job security.  In less than a year, the current eight Scottish Forces will have changed into a single Scottish Force.

Within society, there is also change.  The recent Local Council elections saw many changes across England, Scotland, and Wales.  The Coalition Goverment want to change the composition of the Upper Chamber at Westminster, and to change the very meaning of the word "marriage" (but check my personal ministry blog at www.crazyrev.blogspot.com   Sunday 6th May).

The hymn-writer, Henry Francis Lyte, penned these well-known words in 1847 while he lay dying from tuberculosis (he died only three weeks later): “Change, and decay, in all around I see.  O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me.”  What he was saying, as one who was a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, is what followers of the Christ maintain even today – that in a world of change, He is the unchanging One; that He is, as the writer of one of the letters recorded in the New Testament part of the Christian Bible puts it, “... the same, yesterday, today, and for ever.” (Heb.13:8) 

At a time of change, I find that to be a great encouragement!