Don’t get too comfortable with “normal” …

From start to end, life will be replete with “new normals” … that is, if we’re wise.

The reality is that life is not static, we’re always experiencing constant change, some more directly and drastically than others …

We’re getting older with each passing day.

New people enter our lives, others leave.

Culture changes.

Old trends end and new ones begin.

Technology advances, and with it comes change.

Back in 1989, pastor and prolific author, Charles Swindoll, wrote about change in his book, “Rise and Shine”:

Did you know that it was not until 1850 that our world reached the one billion mark? By 1930 we reached two billion. It took only thirty more years for the world’s population to reach three billion. We have now arrived at five billion. Statisticians tell us that by the end of the twentieth century we’ll have seven billion.

Until 1800 the top speed was twenty miles an hour as people traveled on horseback. With the arrival of the railroad train, almost overnight we jumped to 100 miles per hour. By 1952 the first passenger jet could travel 500 miles an hour. By 1979 the Concorde cruised at more than 1,200 miles an hour. But even back in 1961 the astronauts were orbiting the earth at 16,000 miles per hour.

Things have changed a lot since Swindoll wrote those words. Another minister, the late Howard Hendricks, who was a popular professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, identified in his book, “The Monday Morning Mission,” five kinds of attitudes people harbor toward change:

1. Early innovators (2.6%), run with new ideas.

2. Early adaptors (13.4%), influenced by (1) but not initiators.

3. Slow Majority (34%), the herd-followers.

4. Reluctant Majority (34%).

5. Antagonistic (16%), they will never change.

The majority of ministers are being nibbled at by the last group. They focus on the minority opinion. This group is basically carnal. You expect antagonism from them.

There’s an endless list of how change is always occurring and yet, we’re often foolish enough to entrench our thinking in an insistence upon things remaining the same to the point it rocks our lives emotionally, even spiritually and/or physically, when more intimate changes occur in our lives.

In such a way, we set ourselves up for self-inflicted inner turmoil.

Change most negatively impacts us when we try to build our lives on a foundation that cannot endure change of what we’ve built on it. We can deal with making changes on top of an enduring foundation; it’s when our foundation is insufficient and is rocked and ruined that brings everything down.

And so Jesus points us to how to build a life that endures the “new normals” that come with living life …

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash,” Matthew 7:24-27.

The apostle Paul was succinct in pointing to the single foundation that endures for living life: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ,” 1 Corinthians 3:11.

We can face “new normals” as they come into our lives when we have Christ as our enduring foundation.

Things have changed a lot since you entered this world, and they’ll likely change much more before you leave it. In the meantime, what’s the foundation you have that supports everything in your life?

Scotty