Articles
Afraid of Change?
Several years ago, I was one of the first to get a 'mobile phone'. It wasn't a cell phone, this was pre-cell days, so we were on the cutting edge. As the cells came along, I jumped on that technology pretty fast, as my line of work certainly benefited from improved communications abilities.
As those bag phones evolved into pocket phones, which evolved into 'smart' phones, I was sort of reserved, and at first didn't see much use for all the bells and whistles, especially for the extra $ 40 a month they wanted. I said I just wanted a phone that had a keypad, and made calls. But gradually, I was persuaded because everyone else had all this convenience in the palm of their hand, so I slowly made the mental adjustment.
Texting was a big thing then for a lot of people, but I was just upgrading to being able to see the weather radar on my phone. I said texting made no sense, why on earth would I want to sit and type a conversation, when I could just make a phone call, and actually speak real words to a real person. But, as I was forced against my will to start answering people who were texting me, it quickly became evident that this had some very good advantages, when used properly, and that's still how I feel. It is convenient to not have to interrupt people, and to send out info to multiple people, and to be able to pull it back up and refresh my memory, among other things. It certainly has it's place, at least for me.
So, even though I got here kicking and screaming, I do like the good things that technology provides, and it does make life easier in some ways, although I'd argue we had to make some tradeoffs in the process, one of those being we are less personable now.
I don't know why we are so resistant to change, at least most people are. I'm all for exercising caution to make sure the change is a good one, and I'm still pretty slow to want to change at all. I suppose I got that from my parents, who thought things through, didn't make rash decisions, didn't try to keep up with the "Jones's" and didn't have to have every new toy that came along.
But I think we need to see change as an opportunity. There may often be benefits that would improve how we do things, or what we do to begin with. No doubt when it comes to our religious doctrine, we must test things, and make sure that the change is appropriate and doesn't violate God's law in any way. But if we will be honest, none of us lives like we did 30 years ago, we've changed, and change is an ongoing part of life.
Let us be cautions when evaluating different ideas, but let us also understand, God may be opening a door for us. He wants us to do our due diligence in making sure we still obey Him with new and different ideas, but let us recall that when Jesus walked the earth, He called people to change too, and His ideas were different from what they had always known and been taught. Yet what He brought was most certainly a better way, and He needed people to recognize that.
In our lives, let us not run from change out of fear, or stay in a rut out of comfort. Let us be open to going where God leads, making sure He's the one leading us, then trusting Him to take us to places yet to be discovered. Let our personal level of comfort never limit God's reach through us!
