Change can be good or bad

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Change is always the one constant in life. The one thing that never changes in life is that things in life will always change. We live in an ever rapidly changing world.

Sometimes change happens gradually. You may be able to predict its coming and prepare for its effects. As the changing of the seasons. Spring gradually warms into summer, which gives way to a cooler autumn, finally yielding to the dead cold of winter. We plant our seed, cultivate our gardens, harvest our fruit, and eat our store, all because we knew the change was coming.

At other times, change happens suddenly. Without warning, the phone call comes in the night of an unexpected car accident, an unforeseen health diagnosis, or a premature death. Horror and heartbreak can follow. The trauma etches the date in our memories and in time, the pain subsides, but we recollect the event as if it happened just yesterday.

Then there are those changes that we should have seen coming, but still took us by surprise. The warning signs were all there. Once the change happens, we start to look back over the time leading up to the startling revelation and we scold ourselves for not recognizing the signs sooner. Maybe we did not notice the small memory lapses, which ended in dementia of a grandparent. We could have overlooked the mood swings and uncharacteristic actions of a teenager that was experimenting with illicit drugs. Or maybe we misdiagnosed the signs of boredom and school mischief that revealed our child was just bored due to their unimagined IQ and advanced cognizant skill…so we finally enrolled them into the gifted program for more of a challenge. Change can be bad, or good.

In our ever-changing world, we must be ever aware of one change that is coming in a twinkling of an eye. We should clearly perceive the signs, but for most, it will take them by surprise. Thousands will look back regretfully and see all the markers leading up to it, but it will come upon them like a thief in the night, and catch many unaware. This change will overtake the whole world.

All the warnings are plainly in front of us. The earthquakes, wars and rumors of war, escalating disease and climactic weather events. However, the telltale change that will be ignored will be found in the hearts of men. The scripture warns us that men will become selfish and self-focused, they will be driven by greed, arrogant, and ungrateful. Children will be unruly and parents will abandon their responsibilities. Hearts will become calloused to inhumane acts, and will lose all self-control. Men and women will be brutal, hate good, and love evil, lose all loyalty, and become reckless, conceited, and driven to find the next pleasure fix. Yet despite all of this, they will claim to know God and have an outward piety, when in reality they find themselves enslaved in inescapable bondage.

There was a man who lived thousands of years ago named Noah who, in his day, was the only one that saw the signs. A devastating event that was coming that would affect the whole world. All the boxes were checked. It was going to happen. Clouds were forming. Animals were gathering. A message was going out to warn as many as would listen. Noah told as many people as he could, but unfortunately, he was in the minority. Jesus verified what everyone should have seen coming, but they were so busy with life, they ignored the signs, and, as Jesus put it, “…they knew not (were oblivious) until the flood came, and took them all away…”

Jesus told us of this major change to come. The signs are all around us. In fact he told us that just like the days of Noah, His coming will take most of us by surprise. The apostle Peter said that not only will people ignore the signs, but many will mock the ones who warn us about them, saying “nothing is changing, you are just overreacting…” Peter warns us not to listen to them because they are “willingly ignorant” of the signs.

One day Jesus is coming. The signs are here. My question to you is “Do you want to see them?” He said, like Noah, He is preparing a place. He promised to come for those who are ready. The write of Hebrews tells us that Jesus will appear a second time to save those who look for Him. But, if we are not looking….

Things are just about to change….

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