Immutability

"Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning.  We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety."

Even if you know what the word immutability means, how many people have ever really used it in a sentence?  I have a horrible vocabulary and I never was good at pulling words out on the fly to impress.  In fact, I still have a few words that I am constantly using in the wrong context...and I don't care.  The truth is though, that I've come to love this little (or not so little) word immutability lately.  

It means being incapable of change.  

Most importantly, it is a quality that is central to understanding God.  God is immutable.  He is incapable of changing.  His very nature prohibits itself from changing.  To change would imply that what the former state of God wasn't perfected in it's entirety and a need to change would be present.  He would either have to go from bad to better, from better to worse, mature to immature, or vice versa.  God is perfect.  He is what he has always been, what he wants to be, and what he can't help but being.  Of course we are talking about the core here...the very nature of God.  Even when Christ was born into the world, God didn't change his nature...Jesus was there from the beginning.

In a world and life that is wrought with change, some good and some bad, most people would say that it is hard.  Even if it is a change that needs to happen, it pulls us away from our comfort zone and isolates us with doubt.  We need to realize that change is not an inherently holy thing.  It is a result of fallen people needing to re-align themselves with their creator.  A man who walked closely with the Lord once said:

"In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape.  Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux.  Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle."

Don't we all search for an everlasting permanence in our lives?  Don't we forever seek the solid rock to make our home upon?  Don't we desire to settle the Promised Land and live amongst family that know us?  I'm convinced that even the hard core wanderers among us (and I've done some wandering of my own) deeply desire to put their roots down in the soil of permanence.  That is what the Lord offers us.  That is what he wants to redeem us to.  Each of us know inherently that life changes ultimately bring us to the final change...death.  The cyclical nature of change ends up bringing us to a point of finality and fear.  It's depressing if you think about it.  

Can we seek the immutability of God while still realizing that the Lord works his plan of redemption through the very process that he stands against?  He desires complete permanence for us in him, but to bring us there he needs us to change.  I hope we realize that God will never change to suit our needs or fill our brokenness...instead he invites us into his immutable umbrella like a hen gathering her chicks.  That is beautiful...and immutable.