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A Fixed Point in a Constantly Changing World

 

It has been said that the only thing constant is change.  Think about the number of things that have changed over the course of your life.  Take the way I’m composing this article, for instance.  I’m using a word processor on the
 computer.  If, make that when, I make a mistake, all I have to do is hit the backspace button a few times and correct my errors.  In the old days, typing a major paper was tedious work.  You were allowed no more than two corrections per page.  Any more than that, and you had to type that page over again.  Footnotes were a real pain.  You had to be very sure you left the precise amount of space at the bottom of the page to type in the footnote.  Otherwise, you had to type the page all over again—all on a manual typewriter.  I’m so grateful for the word processor on my computer.

 

Speaking of computers, you may be intrigued by this brief bit of history.  The first fully functional digital computer was known as the ENIAC (short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator).  It was invented by an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943.  It was big and it was expensive.  The ENIAC was about 8 feet high, 3 feet deep, and 80 feet long. It weighed 30 tons and cost about $6,000,000.  It would take more than 3 million ENIACs to match the operational speed of an iPhone.

 

We live in an ever-changing world.  And living in an ever-changing world drives us to seek stability. But because of sin, we tend to look for permanence in things that are also changing. Whether it is a relationship, our bank balances,
 familiar surroundings, or whatever else, we all too readily seek stability in the things that have been created. And we are eventually disappointed by such things, because everything in creation is subject to change.

 

To find true stability and permanence, we must look beyond the created order to its Creator. Malachi 3:6 tells us that the Lord God Almighty does not change.  That should be a great comfort to God’s people.  Our Lord is immutable, meaning He does not and cannot change. God cannot grow more or less powerful. He cannot change for the better since He is perfectly holy. Neither can God change for the worse since that would mean He would be imperfect.  He can never cease to be holy, just, good, or true. His wisdom and knowledge cannot be increased or decreased. 

 

When Lloyd C. Douglas, author of The Robe, was a university student, he lived in a boarding house on the second floor.  On the first floor, lived an elderly, retired music teacher.  Douglas said that every morning they had a ritual they would go through together. He would come down the steps, open the old man's door, and ask, "Well, what's the good news?" The old man would pick up his tuning fork; tap it on the side of his wheelchair and say, "That's middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but, my friend, THAT is middle C!"  The old man had discovered one thing upon which he could depend; one constant reality in his life; one "fixed point in a constantly changing world."

 

In this world that is constantly changing there is one constant; one fixed point; one absolute in which there is no change.  Christ is our “middle C.”  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). What this means, very simply, is that God is dependable!  Our trust in him is therefore a confident trust, for we know that he will not, indeed cannot, change.  His purposes are unfailing; his promises indisputable. It is because the God who promised us eternal life is immutable that we may rest assured that nothing…not trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword shall separate us from the love of Christ.