Life is about change…………..and I’ve decided I hate it. As I sent my 19-year-old back to college today, I felt this incredible sadness flood over me. I don’t want him to go. I know that your children leave home as they get older, but I just don’t like it. I like seeing him everyday at school. I like waiting up on him to get home at night. I miss the everyday interaction we shared. I miss talking about all the football games. I know I can call him, but it’s just not the same.

As I wallowed in my sadness, other thoughts invaded my melancholy. I am about to turn fifty-one in a few weeks. One year more than half of a century. Depressing. I don’t feel that old, but the calendar and the mirror don’t lie. Where have all the years gone?

And finally, I think my cat, Puff,  died. She’s old. If cat years are like dog years, then she is about 119 years old. Maybe fifty-one isn’t so bad after all. I knew she was nearing the end of her life, but it’s another change I don’t like. I hate change.

Life is all about change though. Nothing stands still. The only thing that doesn’t change is God and His word. Its how we respond to the changes in life that matter. I love what Isaiah said in Isaiah 50:7  “Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,I will not be disgraced.Therefore, I have set my face like a stone,determined to do his will.And I know that I will not be put to shame.”  Whatever changes life brings, my task remains the same, “to do his will.” 

So then, life goes on. I know that more changes will happen, some good, some not so good. Whatever comes my way, I will rest in the arms of my Abba and seek to do His will.

Furious Love

I first heard the term “the furious love of God” in one of Brennan Manning’s books. It struck a chord in my soul. When most people think of the love of God, the image I believe they see most often is of a warm, gentle, tender, kind of love. Images of God’s comfort and care are what most people see. It is why they struggle so when things don’t go the way they would like. They want God’s love to be a warm embrace; strong arms that will protect them from all hurt.

Sometimes God’s love is like that, but the greatest example of God’s love was anything but sweet and gentle. When Jesus died on the cross, it was the clearest picture of God’s love for us we will ever see. It was bloody and gruesome and the greatest thing anyone could ever do for us. It was a furious love.

As I look around this world today, I see pain and suffering everywhere. Some people think a loving God would never allow it to happen. But He does allow it and He understands it only as one who has experienced it can. Why He allows it to go on, I don’t know. I may never know why. Either way I choose to trust that whatever happens in this life God is always good.