Our Security Blanket

Our Security Blanket

(is God’s Unchanging Nature)

Malachi 3:6 , JAMES 1:17

What are you counting on for your security? What makes you feel safe in this world? Do you remember Linus in the Snoopy cartoon? He sucked his thumb and carried around what? His security blanket. If anything but God is our security blanket it will in time change and dissolve away. Some counted on their bank accounts, and when the stock market crashed in 1929 they jumped out of windows. If you are counting on a person like all the love songs talk about. "You light up my life" "You are the wind beneath my wings" People and feelings will change, let you down, move away, or betray you, and if they don’t they may just die before you. As a child My Dad was my security. He was big and strong and could fix anything. He had a good job and could help if I had a financial need. I could lay down and sleep in the back of the van, because Dad was driving and I was safe. But when he had his first heart attack in 89 my security begin to crack. And slowly with time and age the helper became helpless, and death took him away. Some count on their church for security, but those who did at my former church found the doors closed 6 years after I left. None of us like change but it is a part of life. Someone said the only person who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper. Our friends in Michigan had a plant close and had to move to North Carolina for a job. Her mother who counted on her for everything said “Now what are we going to do, we depended on you for everything.”

I Change is Enviable

Courtney’s face book said “Hudson turned 1 month today and I want to press the pause button”

We are living in a changing world. Our friends, fiancees, and even our features change. Fashions change.

However, in the midst of an changing world there is an unchanging God.

For a thing to change it is necessary that the change occur in one of two direction: better to worse of worse to better. Now in man change is impossible to escape, but in God change is an impossibility. The second law of thermodynamics declares that everything tends to wear out, run down, and disintegrate. Everything tends to change but God.

People Change

Go to a class reunion and notice how everyone has changed. People may not grow up . . . but they do get older. The hair gets thinner, the midsection gets fuller, the memory loses it’s sharpness and our health places limits on even the most carefree. We are changing all the time. We change our clothes, we change our minds, we change directions, we change jobs, we change cars, and we change moods in an instant. Since change is a part of our lives it is hard for us to grasp the truth that God does not change. Human beings have their good days and bad days. At times we might say that someone is "not quite themselves". But God never has a "bad day." This characteristic of God is called His immutability.

Things Change

Picture a scene from the Old West, sometime in the 1870s. Weary cowboys in dusty Levi’s gather around a blazing campfire after a day on the open range. The lonely howl of a coyote counterpoints the notes of a guitar as the moon floats serenely overhead.

Suddenly a bellow of pain shatters the night, as a cowpoke leaps away from the fire, dancing in agony. Hot-Rivet Syndrome has claimed another victim. In those days, Levi’s were made, as they had been from the first days of Levi Strauss, with copper rivets at stress points to provide extra strength. On these original Levi’s—model 501—the crotch rivet was the critical one: when cowboys crouched too long beside the campfire, the rivet grew uncomfortably hot. For years the brave men of the West suffered this curious occupational hazard.

Then, in 1933, Walter Haas, Sr., president of Levi Strauss, went camping in his Levi 501’s. He was crouched by a crackling campfire in the High Sierras, drinking in the pure mountain air, when he fell prey to Hot-Rivet Syndrome. He consulted with professional wranglers in his party. Had they suffered the same mishap? An impassioned YES was the reply. Haas vowed that the offending rivet must go, and at their next meeting the board of directors voted it into extinction.

Everybody’s Business, ed. my M. Moskowitz, M. Katz, R. Levering

The average number of jobs an American worker has held by age 40: 8

What Counts: The Complete Harper’s Index, edited by Charis Conn