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The last time I wrote for Thriving in Exile was (counting on fingers) nine months ago. Though that happens to be the time required to gestate a human being, I can’t claim such a lofty activity. I didn’t decide to stop writing. I simply stopped for reasons I cannot fathom.
I thought maybe the well had gone dry. I’ve had that experience before, so I knew it might be temporary, but I also know at any moment it might be permanent. Though I’m still very much alive, many parts of my life have already passed on, and I doubt I will see them again.
I used to hike all over the Smoky Mountains, walking miles at a time over rough terrain. Now I have trouble walking to the parking lot from the church building.
I once enjoyed traveling, and yearned to do more of it. I enjoyed getting on an airplane and the experience of flying. Now, I just want to stay home, and the thought of getting through an airport almost nauseates me. Note that this has nothing to do with the pandemic.
I used to devour books, spending hours in chunks digging into both fiction and nonfiction. Now I have trouble maintaining attention long enough to get through more than a couple of pages at a time.
For most of my life, it didn’t matter what I ate—I neither lost weight nor gained it. That has changed in the last five years. Suddenly, I have to pay attention to it.
That last one brought me up short last week. We haven’t been to the doctor in over a year, mainly because of the pandemic. Recent blood tests show that in that year I have officially become a diabetic. Fortunately, I only need medication and diet change right now. Fortunately, medication is available. Unfortunately, I must make drastic, uncomfortable changes.
I am not alone, of course. One in ten Americans has diabetes, and one in three has prediabetes (I assume the two statistical sets do not overlap). If I’m doing the math correctly that means that 43% of the American population either has diabetes or lives on its verge. But ask any individual with a new diagnosis, and I’ll bet such large numbers offer them little comfort.
It’s a big change
I’m grateful for many changes. I’m grateful, for instance, that Knox County, Tennessee, home of the two churches I pastor, has seen a precipitous drop in new COVID-19 infections. We now have fewer than nine new cases per hundred thousand population for the first time in months.
I’m grateful that the writing has started flowing again, though I am as clueless why that has happened as I was why it had stopped. I’ve never believed in waiting on the muse, and it seems something other than writer’s block having evaporated. (Given that I disavow the existence of writer’s block, I would have to believe I experienced something else.) Whatever it is, I am grateful.
All this just reminds me how often Scripture contrasts this existence with the unchangeable nature of God.
Then Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the People of Israel and I tell them, ‘The God of your fathers sent me to you’; and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What do I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I-AM-WHO-I-AM. Tell the People of Israel, ‘I-AM sent me to you.’”
God continued with Moses: “This is what you’re to say to the Israelites: ‘God, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob sent me to you.’ This has always been my name, and this is how I always will be known. (Exodus 3:13-15, MSG)
This is called the immutability of God. He is self-existent, uncaused, and thus unchanging.
The Hebrew writer knew the changeable, unstable nature of life in this world, and so makes an extraordinary claim when he writes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!” (Hebrews 13:8, CEB).
You can depend on life being undependable, changing, unpredictable. But you can manage it. Just remember to depend on God.