Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17 (ESV)
Welcome to Fall!
On occasion, you come across expressions by those who are unknown to the pages of history and yet have nevertheless left their mark by what they have spoken. One such expression I came across recently said about the autumn season that, “The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let the dead things go.”
Autumn has always been my favorite season but I honestly never spent any time considering how the beauty of the fall was the result of leaves losing their green vibrancy, drying out, withering and eventually falling to the ground. God has so marvelously designed his creation to reflect beauty in all the changes of life. I believe this beauty is even more greatly understood and appreciated in light of the fact that God is “immutable”.
What does immutable mean? It means that God never changes (James 1:17; Malachi 3:6). As our family makes changes to our routines, changes to our house, changes in our spiritual life, we recognize that God has no need for change because He, “…is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). We can appreciate the beauty of change because our hope is in God who does not change.
There are dead things that we all carry around with us and perhaps the reason we choose to carry them is because we’ve been carrying them so long that they’ve become a comfort to us, they’ve become familiar. Yet we’ve received this call of God to throw aside every weight that hinders us from running the race that God has marked out for us. How can we throw aside the weight? How can we let the dead things fall? By knowing and believing that God is waiting on the other side to renew, restore, to resurrect as shown in Christ.
We can let the dead things go because we trust in God’s immutable, unchangeable-ness and the greatness of the Gospel that promises resurrection, eternal life even after death.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor Scott