The other day I was in a conversation with a friend about changes. We talked about change and he said, “It’s not just one thing. It seems to be everything! And not one of the changes is one that I would choose. —It’s not just one piece of cheese, but all of them that have moved.” He was referring to a motivational book that appeared in 1998 by Spencer Johnson titled, Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson points out in this wonderful little book that often we can see change coming, we really ought to expect it, but when it comes we are too often unprepared and change can cause us to be afraid.
In the book, Johnson outlines the four main ways we respond to change. Change is unsettling to all of our routines. But God wires each of us up differently. Some of us love change; it gets our blood pumping. Others of us abhor change; it threatens the comfort of our lives. For most of us, we fall somewhere in between. Our world seems to be hurtling out of control. Change is happening faster and faster. The compounding problem is that we rely for stability more and more upon the institutions in our lives. Our churches can be those kinds of stability-giving institutions. Our families can be those as well. While we should expect change in those institutions {it is just normal} in a time of uncertainty in the world, changes there seem to have an even higher magnitude. They are even more unsettling.
The other night I literally lay awake for several hours contemplating some potential changes in my life and my family. The trouble is that all my ‘stewing’ really didn’t slow down the possibility of change nor give me tools to prevent some of the changes I was thinking about. It just made me tired from lack of sleep and I was actually less equipped to deal with changes, should they come, than before I lay down to sleep. That is craziness!
God does not promise to insulate us from changes, but He does promise to be with us in those changes. He even promises that when we allow His spirit to do it, that we will be enabled to find that changes change us. He will use those ‘moved cheese’ kinds of experiences into character-building things that give us wisdom, endurance and an awareness of His presence in our lives. {James 1:2-8}
Change may not be easy for you, but I hope that when you find yourself in it you will choose to let God help you ‘find new cheese’ and work good in you through it.
Russ Ritchel 