“Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.” Psalms 119:89
My kids are 15 months apart. When they were babies, I tried and tried at getting everyone on the same schedule. But, just as soon as I achieved my goal, one of them would start teething or have an ear infection.
I thought once they were toddlers, things would settle down and we would get into my coveted routine. But with the 2’s and 3’s came independent streaks (the nice way of saying temper tantrums), and changes in sleep schedules.
I can hear those of you with children chuckling at my new-mom ignorance. I thought once my children graduated from High School things would be more steady. As we approach the completion of our first year of empty-nesting, I now realize the one consistent thing in our lives is change.
The one consistent thing in life is change
In the first half of Psalms 119, we see Wineskin Dude being rolled over again and again by the changing sea of life. He clung to God’s promises, afraid death was imminent. That’s some pretty serious uncertainty.
It’s curious to me that verse 89 comes right in the center of the longest Psalm in the Bible. We see a shift in Wineskin Dude. He leaps from the waves of destruction onto the solid rock.
“Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.”
He shifts his focus from his problems to trusting in a steadfast, sure, unchangeable God. I have a picture in my dining room of a lighthouse in a storm.
There is a monstrous wave crashing into the lighthouse and right in the center of the picture is a man, standing at the door, safe in the protection of the tower.
God is eternal, and His Word is settled, determined, fixed and unmovable. It will never change. The earth, on the other hand, is in a constant state of change. We are rotating in space causing days, nights, seasons and years. Our lives are never not changing!
But God came before the earth. He is outside our realm of existence. He can’t be unsettled. His word doesn’t change.
Our lives are never not changing.
I wish I could go back and t
ell new-mom-me to jump from the raging waters around me to the solid rock of God. Not crouched down, clinging to the rock with white knuckles, but to stand up and reach my hands to the heavens, knowing I am safe and secure–to trust God is perfectly working out all He’s begun.