I was listening to a CD in my car last week, and the simple idea that kept catching my attention was this: "You are the Rock that never fails, You never fail....You will remain, after the day is done and things of earth have passed, Everlasting God." Try and apply this to anything else in life and you will, no doubt, be disappointed. To remain the same simply because you have no necessities and are completely self-sufficient, is to be God. He is completely and wholly everything that it means to be Everlasting.
We are all looking for stability. We crave it. We would explore uncharted waters to obtain it. We would climb Mt. Everest barefoot to search for it. Yet, somehow, an attribute that I could have told you about God when I was 5 years old still ends up on the back burner in my heart?
He is the Everlasting God. He will remain.
"The mind looks backward in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapse from exhaustion; and God is at both points, unaffected by either."- A. W. Tozer. Our lives long for permanence yet everything around us involves change and death. This scares us and fuels our need for stability seeking. Yet knowing that when everything in this life has failed me (hope in a relationship, trust in a person, finances, parents, cars) my Savior still remains unchanged and full of affection towards me, gives me hope to cling to.
And clinging is what I have been doing lately. When life is not stable and uncertainty gnashes its ugly teeth at you, threatening to take over, hold fast! Cling to the Rock. With instability and uncertainty waiting at my front door to eat me, I have been in need of surrendering my everything to the One who was and is and will be forever more. Why not trust the One who left eternity and entered time in order to join God's eternity and man's mortality in an eternal life granting intervention? (That was a mouthful, I know). Simply, I am tired of being ruled by the fear of instability and lack of control when my life feels like a raging ocean. I am tired of seeking the short-lived situational stability when I serve a God who is the essence of stability. "You never change, You're still the same, You are the Everlasting God. You will remain, after the day is gone and the things of earth have passed; Everlasting God."
Everlasting Father, when things of this earth fail me, when I have placed my hope in something other than solid rock, when all I begin to see is grey and flat land, You are the Rock that I cling to. Let me not forget the desire for eternity and stability that I crave was created by you and for you and will only be totally fulfilled and satisfied in you. I pray that I would wake up each morning in total surrender; taking up my cross in a whole-hearted, lifelong act of devotion to You and You alone. Increase my love. Increase my holy passions. Less of me Lord, and more of unchanging You. Amen.
