Life = Change

As I sit here trying to prepare for Sunday's sermon, I feel completely overwhelmed.  There is so much in the scriptures this week!  As I read the scriptures and read over commentary, I was struck.  Just totally silenced.  I need to let all this sink in and settle in me.  It all spoke to me in a very personal way that I'm not sure is sermon material...

The first Scripture is from 1 Samuel and I'm brought back in time to when I was pregnant with my daughter and my son heard Hannah's story and he was sad.  He cried because he didn't want to give our baby to God.  He wanted to keep her.  It's a sweet, sweet memory for me.

The next scripture is from Hebrews and I am drawn to the words "stir up one another to love and good works... encouraging one another."  Just before that, "have confidence... draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith."  I think of class meetings and accountability groups that are trying to make a come back.  I think of the Advent Study I be will leading soon at 2 churches and can't help but wonder if anyone will come.

Then in Mark...  I hear Jesus telling us to stay on task and not to be led astray.  To be ready for change.  Again, I'm led back to my children.  They are growing older and I feel my life rolling into the change of them starting their lives, of them moving away, of me having a new life without them in my everyday and how this is all part of the way life works.  Life = change.  We have to go with it, we have to embrace it!  We have to meet change head on in faith and confidence.  We can't, I can't be afraid of it.  I'm not supposed to be in control of everything.  Life isn't supposed to stand still.  It is meant to move and grow and change so that new and wonderful things can happen.  Sure sometimes change brings a few bumps in the road but it's those bumps that we learn and grow from, they give us opportunities to cling to God and trust in him.  

Change gives us the opportunity to be there for one another to encourage each other, to provoke each other to love and good deeds.  Change brings us opportunities to go to God in confidence, with a true heart of faith and share it all with him, knowing, as Hannah did, that he hears our prayers and he responds.