Change: Life in a Googled World
November 23, 2009
Dear Friends,
The other day I was listening to a podcast about Google. The author was saying that Google was working on applications for your cell phone that would, through the GPS capabilities of the cell phone and Google’s tracking of your browsing and purchasing history, serve you with coupons directly to your phone dependent on where you were at the time. Imagine, they know you have frequented a pizza parlor a couple of times in the past and that you are approaching it on the highway, so they shoot you a text message saying that if you buy a pizza in the next 15 minutes you get 25% off.
We live in unique and challenging times. Change comes at us so quickly and in such quantities today that it is almost impossible to track. Books are being replaced with Kindle. TV as we knew it is being replaced with Hulu and Tivo. My daughter’s car doesn’t need a key in it to open or start, you just need to have the key with you. My cell phone has much more power and capabilities that the first computer I owned. It is said that the weekday edition of our local newspaper contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.
In addition to all of the changes that are taking place around us, we have the changes that occur during the normal course of life. We have changes between sickness and health, life and death, employment and unemployment just to name a few. All of these changes bring uncertainty and adjustment. Depending on the change and our attitude toward that change, they can be met with great anticipation or dread. The only constant seems to be that there will be change.
In this time of amazing change, we need to fasten ourselves to something of permanence which can provide us with both comfort but more importantly a steady, permanent guide in ever-changing times. We have this steadfastness from our Heavenly Father. “For I am the LORD, I change not.” (Mal 3:6)
God’s word is another source of unerring, unchanging truth in a time when “spin” is much more than a cycle on your washing machine. God says,
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. (Hebrews 6:17)
Immutability means “unchanging.” God’s word is not something that changes with the times or the fashions. God’s word does not change, but it should change us. We should have an open, teachable mind unlike the people of Jesus’ day who did not have ears to hear and were stuck in their “traditions of men.” God’s immutable counsel tells us that the Bible’s message is timeless and does not change with our theological whims and social agendas. God and His word can act as a spiritual GPS in these changing times giving us the right headings toward the Kingdom of God as he says through his prophet Isaiah,
And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. (Isa 58:11)
So let us not shrink back in fear from the changes that are coming upon us whether it is the latest technological innovation or a change in our own life and circumstances, but let us put our faith in the ROCK whose unchanging plan, message and love will guide us through the storm.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.(James 1:16- 17 NIV)
Have a great week,
