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The Preacher’s Corner
By Rev. Dr. Milton Winter “Change is the only constant in life” Heraclitus It
was the ancient philosopher Heraclitus who said that change is the only
constant in life. Other ways of saying the same thing are that no one
can step into the same river twice, or that everything flows and
nothing stays. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. All is
flux, nothing stays still. Depending on your
perspective, the inevitability of change can be both threatening and a
great source of encouragement. On the one hand, we hate to see friends
and loved ones grow old. On the other, we hope for a cure for heart
disease and cancer. Some people devote their
lives to resisting change. They see change as an inevitable decline.
But even George Will, an intellectual leader of conservative thinkers
in America, has said that the best that conservatives can do is to
retard the progress of change. The idea of
standing at the end of a rope, as in a game of tug-of-war, pulling for
the losing side, with heels dug in, being dragged along, is not a very
attractive thought, though there is some virtue in upholding one’s
beliefs, even if we lose. Dr. Ed Meek, retired
journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, spoke on
Mississippi Public Radio recently. He spoke of all the changes that
have occurred in the field of journalism. Each newspaper was once set
in type and printed locally. Now this is done digitally and the editor
no longer gets his hands covered with ink up to the elbows just to put
out the weekly South Reporter. Daddy had a friend
who sold x-ray equipment to doctors and hospitals. He said that over
the course of his career that there was not a single thing he learned
about x-ray equipment that was still current by the time he retired.
Anyone who has gone for a cat-scan or an MRI in a modern hospital knows
this is true. Religion also changes. I have done
so much work with old church records that I could write volumes about
the changes that have occurred. Even churches like my own that rather
pride ourselves in keeping things the way they have always been
(“conserving the best,” we like to say), have seen amazing changes, and
most of them — looking back — we do not regret. There
is the humorous story (to us, now) we tell at the Pilgrimage of Col.
Walter, of Walter Place, being expelled from the church for the sin of
dancing. There is the sadder story of the
church members who were owned by other church members who pocketed the
profits of their labors and forbade them to learn to read and write or
legally marry. The old gallery in the back of our church bears sad
witness to that. The Bible speaks of Jesus as “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” But we grow and change in our appreciation of Jesus and what He taught. There
is an old prayer I like to recall, that says, “Grant us, in all the
changes and chances of this mortal life, to dread nothing but the loss
of Thee, and to cast all our care upon Thee, who carest for us.” I find
that helpful when changes come that I do not like. I also think of the
couplet from the hymn, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide:”
Change and decay, in all around I see,
O thou who changest not, abide in me.
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