Change your life!

Matthew 4:12-17

When Jesus got word that John had been arrested, he returned to Galilee. 13 He moved from his hometown, Nazareth, to the lakeside village Capernaum, nestled at the base of the Zebulun and Naphtali hills. 14 This move completed Isaiah's sermon: 15 "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, road to the sea, over Jordan, Galilee, crossroads for the nations. 16 People sitting out their lives in the dark saw a huge light; Sitting in that dark, dark country of death, they watched the sun come up." 17 This Isaiah- prophesied sermon came to life in Galilee the moment Jesus started preaching. He picked up where John left off: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here."

23 From there he went all over Galilee. He used synagogues for meeting places and taught people the truth of God. God's kingdom was his theme, that beginning right now they were under God's government, a good government! He also healed people of their diseases and of the bad effects of their bad lives. 24 Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria. People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all. 25 More and more people came, the momentum gathering. Besides those from Galilee, crowds came from the "Ten Towns" across the lake, others up from Jerusalem and Judea, still others from across the Jordan.

Food for thought!

"People brought anybody with an ailment, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all."

With just a simple message of "Change your life", Jesus attracted people from all places, all kinds of people and with all kinds of diseases, mental, emotional or physical. Everybody wanted a change in their life. In all these people there was something common. Though from different villages and towns, different backgrounds, with different diseases, all these people were wanting a change in their lives; they all wanted something different.

The same with us. We may be different in our accents, our professions, our beliefs, our lives, yet we all yearn for some change in our lives. Some people wish for a change in their personal life, change in the family, change in their relationship with the spouse, the children, the boss at work, in their income, etc.

Change is not just our wish, it is also our Lord's command to us all: "Change your life." Jesus is not requesting us to change, he orders us to; he is not suggesting a change in our life, he is demanding a change.

Change is not just our wish, it is not just our Lord's order, it is also according to nature. Susan Hayward once noted that nature demonstrates the necessity of change. She noted that almost everything occurs in cycles. The earth rotates on a daily cycle. The moon evolves around the earth on a monthly cycle, and the earth revolves around the sun in an annual cycle. During the year, the four seasons take us from cold to warm and again to cold as plants and animals cycle from a dormant to an active stage and then, as another winter approaches, again become dormant. Tides flow daily toward, and away from, the shore. Each day closes with a sunset, which is followed by a sunrise. Winter ends; spring begins. And so it goes. Every beginning has an ending, and all endings herald a new beginning. In other words, nature is all about change.

Our lives also change constantly according to seasons and cycles. Each of us experiences an endless flow of beginnings and endings. Every season of our life has a beginning and an ending that leads to a new beginning. Childhood ends and adolescence begins; adolescence ends and adulthood begins; young adulthood ends and middle age begins; middle age ends and old age begins.

D. H. Lawrence said, “We are changing, we have got to change, and we can no more help it than leaves can help going yellow and coming loose in autumn.” For a moment, imagine you are a caterpillar. You have this strange urge to spin a cocoon around your body- meaning certain death! How difficult it must be to let go of the only life you have ever known, a life of crawling on the earth in search of food. Yet, if you are willing to trust, as caterpillars seem able to do (caterpillars are more trusting than we humans),  the end of your life as an earthbound worm may be the beginning of your life as a beautiful winged creature of the sky.

We can see each change as a tragedy and lament and resist it, or we can see each change as a new beginning and a new birth into greater opportunities. What the caterpillar sees as the tragedy of death, the butterfly sees as the miracle of birth.

Much of our resistance to change stems from our unawareness, or inability, to realize that we are one with nature. Often we don’t feel the joy of change, perhaps because we forget that in each change are opportunities. Although change can be painful, it is less so if, instead of resisting it, we look at it as a natural process of nature: as leaves budding in the spring, coming to full leaf in the summer, turning red and gold in autumn, and dropping from the trees in winter. It can be comforting to comprehend that we are an integral part of the great scheme of nature.

So, don’t resist letting go of old ideas and attitudes; practise change. The less resistance we have, the less pain we experience in making the journey through the many cycles of our lives.