To change or to be transformed?

We live in an interesting world … peculiar at times, perplexing most of the time, continuously challenging and sometimes just plan weird … and yet, none of us ever want it to change. Maybe we are weird and the world is simply peculiar. The question persists: Do we like the world in which we live … even with all of its “weirdness”?

That was kind of the question I proposed to one of the physically challenged individuals that I visited today. “Suzie” (not her real name) kept “plowing” the same field … how people, who she had given access to her home, came in and “changed” everything. Actually, they simply began the long and thankless job of going through tons of mail that my person had allowed to pile up since her parents died in 2006. Her home had become a haven for dust with stacks of “stuff” in piles all over and yet, she was upset because they had “changed” every … even moving the stuff on her mother’s dresser (in order to dust it) and didn’t place it all back in its proper order. “Don’t you want to move on beyond your parents death? Don’t you think it is about time that some of this “stuff” … their “stuff” … be sorted out and given away or sold, like their car which is sitting right where they left it?” I asked. “Well, since you put it that way probably yeah, but it is so hard – too hard,” she shared.

Nothing worth doing is ever easy. We are asked of God to be changed agents in his world. Actually I prefer the title, transformer … the idea of taking what is and transforming, by God’s grace, into the Kingdom of God. The word and concept “change” just doesn’t do it for me any longer. While “transforming” denotes making something useful out of something un-useful. Or even a better analogy would be dieting – to change means that for a particular period of time a person follows a particular eating regiment and they lose weight, but once off the diet the weight will usually come back, but to transform ones approach to food, understanding of food, and ones lifestyle concerning food is another entire matter. One approach is immediate, but short lived while the other is gradual yet for a lifetime.

My real question to “Suzie” was a transformational one … are you ready to become the person we both know God wants you to be? If you are comforted by the stuff which surrounds you then your answer will be “No,” but if something has to, needs to, must be changed why not make it transformational … moving you into a completely new direction, turning your world totally upside down and creating a “Suzie” world instead of a “mom and dad” world.

It is a hard question and thus the reason most of us would rather simply stay where we are in our thinking … behavior patterns … because we have become comfortable – as comfortable as we can – in the world that we have created in our image. To transform our world is a real challenge, but the benefits are truly out of this world. The decision is ours and ours alone … no one can make the decision for us as no one can take the actions that are necessary to get rid of the clutter made by our “stuff” or move in a different direction with our relationship to food. By transforming our world we are making a strong statement about the role that God is going to have in our decision making process … the role within our daily life.

It is about time to move on … isn’t it?

Quote for today: The adventure of new life in Christ begins when the comfortable patterns of the old life are left behind. David Roher