Change

I have no idea if change is good or bad.  The immediate impact of change often creates an emotional wave that reaches out beyond the immediate.  Depending on one's perspective, change can trigger a response that ranges from the euphoric to rage, wonder to despair, or awe to ambivalence.  Whatever one's response is, there is still little to tell you if how the change will touch your life in the fuller context of time.  Diseases without a cure can be a blessing or a curse.  Failures may lead to learning and growth that in turn create opportunities that would have never been available if not for the initial failure.  Incredible achievements, cures, and milestones can be stepping stones for something even better or gateways to ultimate disasters.
In my experience, conversations about change are often thinly veiled pleas for the one in pain to “rise above it” or calls to move on beyond.  I would like to suggest that God invites us to consider a very different approach.  First, when change occurs, take a deep breath before classifying the change as good or bad.  No matter how compelling the need to analyze is, or as obvious the potential answer is, letting go of the need to judge, sort, and in context respond is a good thing.  Even when there was “a terrific persecution of the church in Jerusalem.  The believers were all scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.” (Acts 8.1)  The obvious was not.
Second, remember that change is often beyond one's control.  The fact that it is occurring in your life or mine does not automatically say or mean anything.
Third, the question of each moment, with or without change, is the same; what will I do in the moment I have now?  Will I exercise compassion?  Will I intentionally reach for my values and priorities?  Will I take accept and exercise God given freedom?  Will I act to make the world a better place?
Today will be unique.  The change that occurs will come from your choices as well as my own.  Welcome to freedom.