21. Time for Change

Do you ever feel like you’ve just got to grips with where you’re at and what God is doing in your life, you’re just starting to feel settled and on top of things and then, whoops, everything changes again and you find yourself facing a totally new set of challenges?

Well, welcome to the real world – it’s called change!

Today, we’re starting a new topic in our Walking through Wilderness blog series, and it’s all about change. Dealing with change in our lives at the best of times is not easy, but being uprooted out of your comfortable routine and rhythm and thrown into an uncomfortable journey through a wilderness, like the Israelites were, is quite extreme!

Let’s face it, change is an unavoidable part of life. Nothing stays the same. In fact, there is only one thing here on earth that will never change; and that is the fact that there will always be change! It’s the whole ‘circle of life’ scenario – life goes on hour by hour, day after day, season after season and year after year. The very nature of living is change, because without change there can be no growth and, without growth, there is only death.

Numbers chapter 33 tells us that, during their 40 years wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites camped at 42 different places. That meant they were ‘moving house’ on average, more than once a year. Can you imagine what that must have been like?

During our first ten years in the UK we moved house 6 times – and I thought that was bad! The palaver of moving house is enough to test the patience of the most mild-mannered person: packing everything up, deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, cleaning the house you are leaving, letting everyone know your new address, changing your contact details on all your ongoing payments and dealing with the nightmare that is changing utility providers!

As painstaking as that process is, when you rent a house you have a lease so you know that you have at least a year, or a specified amount of time, before you have to move again. The Israelites had no idea how long they would be at each place. All they knew was that, when Yahweh’s cloud moved, they moved. It could be weeks, months or years; their life was one of constant change and total unpredictability.

They weren’t even going through all of that in order to get somewhere, because they weren’t actually going anywhere! They were literally wasting time (they thought!) wandering around a desert until all the men who had been aged 20 or over at the time of the twelve spies' mission into Canaan had died. They had to do this for 40 years - that’s roughly half a lifetime. Imagine spending half your lifetime travelling aimlessly round in circles, living in a tent?! For people like me who are not big fans of camping, that would be slow and painful torture. The level of frustration must have been immense.

For most women, home is where the heart is. Our homes represent our security; our home is the expression of our heart. It’s very hard for a woman not to be able to settle, put down roots and make a home. Sure, the Israeli women had tents, but there is only so much you can do with a tent!? Some camp sites must have been better than others, in better locations or with better water supplies and vegetation. A good camp site might mean that they didn’t have to walk too far to get to the well or water source. Perhaps there was more shade, or maybe the soil at an oasis was actually good enough for them to plant and grow some vegetables …if they stayed there long enough to harvest and eat them?!

But the inevitable would always happen and, no matter how much they liked a particular site, they would have to leave it, because that was life for the wilderness sojourning Israelites, for forty long years. Change was unavoidable. It was their way of life.

It’s ours too, whether we like it or not.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells us that life is made up of times of planting and uprooting, killing and healing, tearing down and building, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, searching and giving up, tearing and mending….

The bottom line is that change is here to stay. We can’t avoid it and, if we try to, it usually results in our getting stuck, and that is where stagnation occurs. This principle is very aptly illustrated when we look at the Dead Sea, a lake located in the Jordan Rift Valley. The Jordan River is the only major water source flowing into the Dead Sea, and there are no outlet streams, which make it one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water. Because of this, plants and animals cannot flourish there, and fish cannot live in the water. When my brother visited Israel many years ago, he told us about his experiences of the Dead Sea and how, because of the high salt content in the water, he found it difficult, in fact nigh impossible, to swim in the Dead Sea. Instead, he spent a lot of time just floating in the salty water.

The Dead Sea could perhaps be seen as a metaphor for the life of someone who is resisting change. There is no movement or momentum in their life; everything is the same, looks the same and stays the same, just like the water in the Dead Sea. It has no outlet, the water just stays in the same place, and the result is stagnation.

On the one hand, you could say that living in a ‘Dead Sea world’ has its benefits – it is relatively safe, there is very little risk taking required and you always know what to expect, because nothing changes. However, we were not designed to stay the same, or to live day after day the same as the previous day. Father God created us to grow and flourish, to experiment, to try new things, to step out bravely and fail at times, to pioneer, to push the boundaries and expand our borders.

In order to live life to the full, we need to be prepared to embrace change: to let go of the safety of floating in our stagnant, undemanding sea, and wade into a river which will carry us to unknown places and exciting new experiences.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Until next time ….

Prayerfully ask yourself the following questions:

·       How do I feel about change? Do I embrace it, or struggle with it?

·       Is there a sense of movement and momentum in my life at present, or am I in a metaphorical ‘Dead Sea’?

Nicky Heymans is an author of historical fiction who is known for drawing fresh life and inspiration out of familiar Bible stories. She would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions by scrolling down to the bottom of this page and clicking on the 'contact' link, and she will get back to you.