Life Changing

As part of an attempt to lose a few pounds in weight and get a bit more fit at the same time, my son and I have started going for hour-long walks.  Yesterday we walked along a street quite near to our home but realised that there had been some building work done that we hadn’t noticed before.  A whole row of new houses had suddenly appeared where once there had been some run-down flats and a few scruffy looking shops.

 

All around us things are constantly changing, no more so than in the gardens and parks.  The seasons change, although here somehow we seemed to have missed summer this year.  But the gardens show that nature continues its ever-changing appearance.  Flowers come and go, fruits appear while others are reaching the end of their season.  The cherry trees are already losing their leaves and the evenings are drawing in.

On the news yesterday morning there was a report about how in the southwest there have been changes along the coastline.  Some cliffs have broken off, landslides have occurred and in one place one lane of the road had disappeared.  It seems that the earth itself is changing its form.

All of life seems to point to the fact that things are constantly changing and moving.  The old is done away with and the new comes into being.  And yet we humans have an ability to try to keep things established as they were in years gone by.  Things that once were classed as movements have become institutions bogged down by tradition and often losing all the sense of the driving force that they once had.  Too often we echo the sentiments of the close disciples of Jesus when they said ‘Let us make three tabernacles’ as though the spiritual experience that they had just had, could in some way me immortalised in stone.  It’s the desire to ‘bottle it’ and keep things as they were at that wonderful, awesome moment and keep it just like that for posterity when the Spirit moves and keeps moving.  If only we could learn from God’s creation the important lesson that God is always on the move and who knows what wonders we are missing because we want to hang on to what we’ve got instead of allowing ourselves to go where the Spirit leads?