Change....

 My daughter recently said something that struck me in its truthful simplicity.

Discomfort is okay, blasphemy is not.

In this age of discomfort on every level, that is a profound truth, and has given me a lot to think about.

We all strive to be comfortable.  We want our career to go well, our family life to be peaceful and fulfilling, to have money and creature comforts.  Most of all, we don't want to be forced into an uncomfortable situation, maybe even challenged to think about things that are beyond our control or influence, because its all overwhelming and after all, what can we do, anyway?

There is nothing inherently wrong with being comfortable.  But as long as we are rooted in our current situation, we won't ever change, and we become stagnant.  As long as things flow along smoothly, why would we consider any kind of shift?  Only when we are uncomfortable will we be impelled to think about things outside our own zone, and that is when genuine change occurs.

This has been a time of change in our country and our world.  We are facing challenges to the status quo on every level.  Job losses have been devastating, family life is completely disrupted, our usual life choices have been limited and even our personal freedoms have been challenged.  We have been forced to think about everything from our health and personal safety and that of our loved ones, to racial injustice, to the role that government plays in our lives.  It feels like life, as we have always known it, is ending and we have entered this weird new twilight zone with all new rules and routines, and we have no idea how to navigate this world.  And worse yet, no one agrees on the right answers, so you don't even know who you can talk to or where your safety net will be found.

But the world has ever been thus.  Change is a constant, not an aberration.  Change is necessary to creating a better world.  Sometimes we must destroy the old to create a better new.  The butterfly comes from the death of the caterpillar, and that should be our goal, as well.  How many times have you looked back at a hard time and realized in retrospect that the hardship forged a better person, life or situation?

Jesus did not hide from change, nor from confrontation.  He challenged everyone he encountered to turn their lives upside down and follow a new way of life, one led by the gospel of grace.  From enticing the disciples into leaving their fishing nets and families to become itinerant travelers spreading his radical new message to confronting the religious elite giving rote lists of rules whose meaning was lost in the imperative of governance, he made them uncomfortable and threw them off balance, embracing the disenfranchised and uplifting the marginalized while throwing their rules right back at them.  Even from the cross he uplifted those whom society had discarded and promised paradise if they believed his message of salvation while forgiving the people who had crucified him without understanding their role in the coming change.

Jesus has called us to live a life of discomfort, being in this world, but not a part of it.  This uproar caused by the humble carpenter's son ends, not in his death on the cross, but in the new life he has purchased for us in his resurrection and ascension.  We continue to be a part of the calling to challenge and disrupt and die to the world in order to live in eternity with our Savior.

In Luke 9:13, Jesus exhorted us:

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."

To take up the cross means to give up the safety of our easy comfort and embrace the discomfort of change for an eternal future, no matter the present sacrifice.  But it goes beyond that.  Jesus calls us to righteously change, and to bring his message of change to everyone, everywhere.  It is important that the message we bring is the message of Jesus, not our own perspective or ideology.  Ultimately, the only change that matters is the one Jesus brings - the change in our heart that brings us to God.  The true blasphemy is clinging to our own ideals while rejecting the truths inherent in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I embrace change, because each one brings me one step closer to the perfect eternity God planned for me.  In this time of upheaval, I will fix my eyes on the cross and the one who has promised me that I am saved, no matter what the world throws my way.