All Change

Peter Baker | 08:55, Wednesday 4th April 

Until two years ago, I was an unreconstructed MPP (mobile phone phobe) resisting, like Canute, the onrushing tide of social media which went with the smart phone. And every so often since, for the sake of my own sanity, I have returned to that world.

For the past few weeks, as some of you may have noticed, I have taken a deliberate break from the world of Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Apart from a recent blog about the dangers of instant communication (which I wrote but didn’t status update) I have refrained from dabbling in online conversations, either as consumer or creator. I wish I could say I gave it up for Lent. But 40 days without a mobile phone would be too much, even for me.

So imagine my surprise when I went to my Facebook account on Monday morning to find that everything had changed. Layout, text, pictures, chronology – all different. And not just me. As I searched, all my 'friends' pages had undergone the same transformation.

Now I'm sure there are good reasons for this. However I am still adapting to the new world order of the Facebook 'Timeline' and feeling rather like one 90-year-old church deacon. He was asked by a reporter whether he'd seen lots of changes in church during his life time. His reply - "Yes, and I am proud to say I have been against every single one of them!"

It's been a good life lesson. Now I truly understand what some of the older people in church go through when a new song with a completely unsingable tune is introduced for the first time on a Sunday, or when we give the notices in a different place in the service. 

This, on a small scale, is what Alvin Toffler meant by Future Shock, in his seminal book of that title, back in the pre-PC/MP3/mobile-phone/iPad days of the 70's when an Apple was what you had in your school lunch box and a Mac was what you wore if it was raining.

But things change, sometimes so quickly, and we have to adapt or die. But there is a deep personal insecurity which can surface if everything changes at the same time.  

I have come to the conclusion that change is far easier to handle if you are the one initiating it. There are times when we all want things to stay just as they are. Often that's because we have settled into a rut or because we believe change is regress not progress. 

For the Christian change is here to stay. Maturity in Christ is the result of personal change. And changing circumstances are often what God uses to inculcate growth in us as we lean harder on Him, the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever. It's because God never changes in His character and purposes that He is always relevant and reliable. There is no divine software or firmware update needed to iron out the bugs - God really is perfect.