Changes

Isaiah 40:28: Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

I don’t know if you think about change that much. I know I do, and lately I’ve been thinking about telephones and how they’ve changed. Many of you probably remember rotary dial phones, party lines and making a long distance call.

Now if we’re forced to use a dial phone (and don’t ask me where you could find one), it seems to take forever for the dial to do its duty. If you were making an emergency call, someone might be suffering while you dialed. And of course, the dial phone was replaced by the push button model—it was much faster.

We were on a party line when I was a lad, and I enjoyed listening in on our neighbors and their business. Such ill-gotten pleasure did not last long when my parents found out what I was doing. They took away my phone privileges, which didn’t bother me since there was no one I wanted to call. Eavesdropping was better.

Making a long distance call was a big deal. For one thing, we had to call the operator who put the call through. Then we had to decide whether we wanted a usual call or to make it collect or even—gasp—person to person, a relatively expensive proposition. Not that it bothered me since there was no one I knew who could take a person to person call.

Obviously, all the changes to phone service came as a result of changes, though enhanced services sometimes could be a problem. We carry our phones with us, which means we are accessible until we turn it off. And then there is the curse of unsolicited calls, which means that I can renew the warranty on my seventeen-year-old car or improve my medical insurance or have my roof fixed. I don’t need any of those, but they keep calling.

The point of all this is that change is a mixed blessing. We need some of these improvements, while others we really don’t need. God, as we know, never changes, and God is good, staying with us throughout our lives and beyond. Praise God for God’s eternal presence, given to us while we were yet sinners. His gift of love means that God will always with us, now and forever. Amen.