Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow | Part 4: No Need to Aspire | Part 5: No Greater Force
There’s one more cause of change that I’d like to consider.
For several summers I took teams of students on short-term mission trips in Africa. Several of those trips were to the same place, an orphanage just south of Mwanza, Tanzania; and for the same purpose, to tutor the children during their school break, to ensure that they didn’t fall behind in their studies. I was happy to take along any students with character, but I was especially looking for Education majors, because they had some learning about learning, and they always did a good job with the children.
On one of those trips, I saw one of the guys—Matt was his name—with a group of 5 or 6 children down by the outdoor fireplace we called the incinerator, where we burned the burnable trash. They had taken a load down there, and he had lit it up. He was explaining what was happening—oxidation, of a rapid sort. The compounds in the trash were chemically uniting—or something—with oxygen in the air, and the output was gases and particulate matter, a different chemical form.
A few minutes later the group was up by the choo—that’s “cho,” like “slow,” and means “toilet.” He had the metal door open and was pointing out the rust, which in a few places had eaten all the way through the door. Same process, he said. Oxidation. But this is much slower; you can’t really see it happening, but it is.
That swingset I bought for my girls when they were little has long since become random clumps of iron oxide and a few chips of paint.
Everything in the world is decaying. Any walk in the woods will confirm that. There’s a cycle of growth, death, decay, and rebirth all throughout nature.
We see it in people as well as things. You and I have been dying since the day we were born—and technically even before. At any given moment we don’t feel the aging process, but when we see a friend after a long absence, we can’t but notice. Going to a high-school reunion, as I did in October, will impress that truth on you.
Our possessions are on a determined course to the landfill, and we are on a determined course to the grave.
I don’t say that to depress anyone; it’s the cycle of life, where new life comes from death, in both the physical and the spiritual worlds. For believers in Christ, the grave is no threat, for it has no victory (1Co 15.53-57).
I recount all this in order to make the point that none of it applies to God.
He doesn’t age; he doesn’t weaken; he doesn’t die; he doesn’t decay.
I find it interesting that even when Jesus died, his body was not allowed to decay. His friend Lazarus’s body had begun to decay after 4 days in the tomb (Jn 11.39), but Jesus was in his tomb only for parts of 3 days. A few weeks later, in his sermon at Pentecost, Peter noted that Jesus’ body had not decayed (Ac 2.31), and he noted that this fact had been predicted a thousand years earlier (Ac 2.27).
No, God doesn’t age, despite the passage of time. At the age of infinity (yes, I know that statement is technically problematic; work with me here), he is as strong and clear-headed as he ever was, and he always will be.
He doesn’t change.
That means that you don’t have to wonder how he’ll interact with you, or whether he’s still good, or whether his posture toward you will change, or whether he’s getting cranky. You don’t need to walk on eggshells. He is always great, and he is always, only good.
Beginning next time, we’ll expand on these thoughts and delineate some consequences and applications of God’s immutability.
Part 7: Trustworthiness | Part 8: Mercy | Part 9: Confidence | Part 10: Victory
Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash
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