Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included
God doesn’t change.
But why?
I’d suggest that we approach this question through the back door. Let’s think about why other things do change, and then postulate that God is not like those other things.
I suppose the first reason for change that would occur to us is the one that’s right before our eyes, every day.
We see children changing all the time—and if we don’t see those children every day, then the change is all the more apparent when we do see them. Every day on social media I see someone ask, “How can my child be 3 [or 9, or 15] already?!” These days parents of small children have taken to buying a blanket with numbers on it, and taking a photo every month with their child lying on the blanket, and the appropriate number circled.
They change so fast.
And while we teasingly ask them to stay little forever, we really don’t want that.
We really, REALLY don’t want that.
We don’t want them to be helpless and dependent forever—if for no other reason than that we’re likely to be helpless and dependent someday, and we want somebody making the decisions who knows and loves us. And who owes us. :-)
We revel in the things our growing children learn and the skills they acquire.
First it’s as simple a thing as rolling over, then sitting up, then standing, cruising, walking, running.
And then catching a baseball, or executing a grand jete or a tai otoshi, or graduating summa cum laude, or any of those other italicized things out there.
People need to change because they start out so limited in their knowledge and skills. Because they are, in that sense, imperfect, uncompleted.
Even as adults we feel the need to keep learning and growing. The first day at a new job we feel intimidated and useless, asking lots of questions and feeling clumsy both physically and intellectually. We love progressing to the point where we know what we’re doing and we accomplish it well.
We read books. We watch YouTube videos. We take adult education classes. We travel.
Always growing. Till the day we die.
Why is that? Why the constant push to get better—at the things we’re already doing, or at new things we’ve never tried before?
Simple.
Because we’re incomplete, undeveloped, short of our potential. We have things to learn. We can always get better at something.
Okay, we’re in the back door; now let’s take it out on the front porch, where everyone can see it.
One reason that God doesn’t change is that he doesn’t need any of what we’ve just described.
He doesn’t need to grow; he doesn’t need to mature; he doesn’t need to get better at anything.
He has always existed, and he has always existed in perfection. He didn’t need his infinite past to get infinitely good at an infinite number of things; he has always been infinitely good at everything. It’s his nature; he can’t be less than perfectly good, and great, and wise. There’s nothing he had to learn, no skill he had to polish.
That means that he satisfies your needs perfectly now; he won’t be better at it later. You never need to wait for a “better time” to go to him with this or that problem or request.
That also means that his will for you is perfect right this minute; he won’t have to change it later because he realized something then that he doesn’t realize now.
He doesn’t change, because he’s perfect.
What a liberating and peace-giving truth.
Part 4: No Need to Aspire | Part 5: No Greater Force | Part 6: No Decay | Part 7: Trustworthiness | Part 8: Mercy | Part 9: Confidence | Part 10: Victory
Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash
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