I Am Making All Things New

The only thing constant is change.
This is true yet not quite.
True in one way.
I am about to complete my 15th year of pastoral ministry, and looking back, change was my constant companion. When I began at Liberty Springs UMC in Milam, TX in 1995, I wrote my sermon on a computer that today we would laugh at. My iPhone has many times the computing power that that computer had. Internet was something that involved a dial-tone and a new browser called Netscape, and e-mail was a novelity item that we thought would never be as popular as those new pocket cell phones. Texting, blogging and tweeting were not even on the horizon.
That is superfical stuff compared to how I have come from a single pastor in the East Texas countryside, to a married pastor going to seminary, to a father and pastor in the Houston suburbs, to a family pastor trying to go back to school (again) and now a family pastor with a multi-staffed church back in the East Texas countryside.
Change has been my constant companion. Just about the time I have figured out life, life has moved on, and now I realize that learning and growing never ends, not just because I am striving to perfection, but because the target I am shooting at is always moving farther off.
Yet as I look back, I do have to say that there has been something just as constant as change. Grace. For each time I have been called to figure everything out again, God has always provided the grace necessary to grow into the new that God has placed before me.
I am reminded of this passage in Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord, who made a way through the sea,
A path through the mighty waters:
Remember not the former things,
Neither consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing,
Even now it is springing to light.
Do you not perceive it?
A way will I make in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert!
Isaiah 43:16, 18-19
I am saying all of this because of two things. First, this is my first blog entry. I am doing this as part of the website redo for the church, a way for everyone to get to know me better.
Second, I am saying all of this to remind myself and others that in a world where things are always different than the day before, God is constant, and by his grace and love he will make a way. Peace.