Our great unchangable steadfast God

Me in cowby suit with my family

There are times when we all long for the unchanging security we knew while growing up.  Do you remember what it was like to be a child?  If we skinned our knee, all it needed was for Mum to give it a kiss and it was all better.  Or waking in the middle of the night and being scared of the dark, all you had to do was climb into the safety of Mum and Dad’s bed and instantly the “Boggy Man” disappeared, and our world was safe again.  It didn’t seem to matter what our problems were Mum and Dad had a solution for them. 

My first day at school

I remember starting school, and feeling very alone that first day.  I didn’t know anyone there.  The teacher had lots of rules.  You couldn’t talk when you wanted to, or play with the toys in the room except at set times, and Mum had left me there by myself.

Then it all changed at lunch time, sitting on the seats under a tree in the play ground another boy in my class sat beside me and started talking to me.   We discovered we lived in the same street and enjoyed the same games.  I had my first friend and he helped make school a whole lot less scary.   The next ten years we walked to and from school together, played cowboys and Indians after school, learned to ride bikes at the same time and saved our pocket money to go to the pictures on the weekend together.   Robert was my best mate.

I remember discovering girls didn’t really carry girl germs and the excitement of first love.  So many tricky decisions, where to take a girl on a first date?  The pictures where always safe, but then do you have the courage to put an arm about her and what about  later, just how to say good night? 

We did kiss and I thought I had found the love of my life.  While walking home from her back to her house I planned out the rest of our lives, marriage, a couple of children and an early retirement after making my first million dollars. 

She was the person I was going to love for ever and she was going to love me forever.

Needless to say, none of that worked out.  I didn’t earn my first million dollars.  I didn’t marry that girl.  The same with my best mate at school, by the time we had finished high school we had both found ourselves with a different circle of friends.  Even the relationship I have with my parents has changed.   With age they are no longer as active and healthy as they were and I have found that increasingly I have been the one who has to listen to their problems and help them.

I think that is one of the great things about God.  He never changes.  He is the same today, tomorrow and for ever.  When the world is constantly changing God is always the same.

God offers the assurance that He really does love us with a love that will endure for eternity.  People change, love can fade, friends change, parents age but God is unchanging.