Art & Devotion: Jesus is the Same
I found his pants! A week into school, and I have pants for my son to wear. I had to tunnel my way through a pile of moving boxes to the far back corner, but I found them. Yes! Now, if I could just find the scissors for my daughter’s homework. School lunch food? I have to find that, too? And where did I put the memory work calendar?
Moving 1,000 miles just before my kids start a new school year has been, well, an adventure I guess. August and September are usually the most unsettling months of the year for me as a mom just because school is starting. This year a move was mixed in with the usual back-to-school angst. On top of it, this school year starts a new life season for me. All three of my kids are in school full time. Eep!!
Will I make enough impact on our family budget with my business to justify continuing as a work-at-home mom while my kids are in school? Will they survive ALL DAY without me? We are jumping into new territory here, and I’m not sure I like the change. I’m driving around in my mini-van with butterflies in my tummy, meanwhile convincing my kids that their own butterflies are totally normal and ok.
I love sameness, routine, and comfortable rituals. I like losing count of how many times I’ve put the same tea kettle on the same stove followed by the same “click” of the same burner switch. I want to drive down the same street to get the same groceries at the same store again and again. I prefer to at least know where I can find my son a pair of pants. Even if they aren’t clean. (They probably aren’t.)
I love to curl up in my same purple chair, with my same favorite blanket to read my same favorite authors. Sameness comforts me, I know what to expect from it. The first day I dropped all my kids off at school, I promise you I soon went home to throw that mustard yellow kettle friend on the burner and find my same mug.
Life at home changes faster than I’m comfortable with, and I think that life in our culture changes even faster. Lately, I can hardly keep up with how fast our society is changing. People’s convictions about various topics are shifting quickly. You know some of these hot button issues. If you are like me, you are surprised to find some folks near and dear to you did a 180 on their beliefs when you weren’t looking. I hardly know how to perceive the society in which I live. It’s looking stranger and stranger to me daily.
“Some things never change.” I like that statement. I want things that don’t change. Sometimes we say that phrase about something we actually wish WOULD change. “Some things never change.” {Insert head shake and eye roll here.} When you get down to it, though, there is very little in life that really truly can be relied upon to stay the same.
“Some things never change” will always be true of God’s word and God himself. God’s comforting promises won’t change. His word stays the same. Jesus stays the same. While our society or those around us may want to change what’s in the Bible, or how they feel about the Bible, it doesn’t change. Jesus doesn’t change. He’s the same - same friend, same shepherd, same lamb, same teacher, same Word, same Savior. I can count on him to stay the same, and oh I love it.
While everything around me changes, as seasons change, I can pour my favorite coffee in the same mug. I can sit in my favorite purple chair, with my same quilt, reading my favorite author. He’s always the same.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
To download the "Jesus is the Same" artwork above for your own use this month, as a reminder of the comforting truth that Jesus is always the same, click on the circle below for the format you would like.
Is back-to-school crazy in your house, too?
