For Everything There is a Season: Dealing with Your Fear of Change

I have always hated change. Always.

That’s what happens when most of the changes you experience growing up are negative, when you try so hard to be able to control the things you can because life feels uncontrollable, and when you just wish a few things could be permanent.

From four stressful moves in two years, to a different actor playing a character on a TV show I watch, change bothers me. I am a person who enjoys the comfort of normalcy and finds safety in a sense of permanence. But rarely are things in life permanent, and normal is always disrupted by change, whether it be simple or catastrophic.

If you are like me, you don’t like change either. Maybe you even fear it. But God has not called us to fear change.

Nothing New

We may see change as a result of our fast-paced society that relies on instantaneousness, but change is no new thing. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says:

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.”

Change is as old as the earth itself. Earthly things don’t last forever, they change like the seasons and change like the weather.Some things change from chapter to chapter, others last only a page. But it isn’t the pages we are meant to cling to, or even the chapters. It is the story. God’s Story. Because He has written it beautifully.

Beginning to End

Verse 11 of Ecclesiastes chapter three reads, “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

We live within the story. We see it as a traveler on the road sees the earth, one piece at a time, every change in landscape and companions coming to us at those moments. God has already written the story. He sees it as a man on a space satellite sees the earth, complete and round and beautiful.

The changes in our lives don’t take God by surprise. He is never caught off guard. He makes many things in life to be like flowers; beautiful and temporary. Often the fact that something will not last forever adds to its beauty and the way we cherish it.

Enjoy and Have Faith

The author of Ecclesiastes closes this discussion with two clear statements. First, with this temporariness in mind, we ought to enjoy the blessings God gives us with a whole heart (vv. 12-13). Second, God and His plans are immovable and unchangeable (vv. 14-15).

If you knew that a friend would one day be taken from you, how much more would you love and cherish that friend while you had them? If you knew that an opportunity was going to disappear, how much more effort would you put into it while you still had it?

There is a crab-apple tree in my yard and in the spring, it is absolutely dripping with pale pink blossoms. One day it is covered with flowers, the next all the flowers have gone with the wind. That is why, those few days before, while the tree is in full bloom, we feast our eyes on the tree’s beauty and enjoy its flowery scent.

Nothing is permanent. Love it while it’s here.

God, on the other hand, never disappears and never changes. When your heart is longing for stability and permanence, He is where you should turn. He is the constant in a world that is like shifting sand. His plans are faithful, and His promises are true.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” -Hebrews 13:8

A Season of Change

Maybe you find yourself in a season of change. Maybe you just moved and find yourself having to start a lot of things over. Maybe you just entered a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend and are now trying to figure out how a life for two works.

Or maybe you have found yourself graduated from high school and on the brink of finding yourself in secondary education or the workforce. You’re standing in that middle ground where you’re not sure what is ahead of you because everything you know now lies behind. The shift from high school to university, from living with your parents to moving out on your own, from doing homework to paying the bills can be scary. But you are not alone.

Change is hard, but change can be beautiful if we let it. God calls us to take hold of change and embrace it as an opportunity for growth in trusting Him.

As we look at the change in our lives as followers of Christ, and the change coming to us as Rebelutionaries, let us not look at change with fear or sadness, but with excitement for all that God has next.