A Change Will Do Us Good

Spring is my favorite time of the year. It holds the promise of warmer weather. Our dead yellow grass springs up in a verdant green. Buds on trees burst into flowery white clouds, and bulbs open their colorful faces to the sun. The cold drabness of winter comes alive and new again.

The same thing happened to me after I started going to church. My husband and I, up until that point, had put our heads down and poured everything into growing a company and savings. Then, 9/11 happened and brought the world to a standstill. That horrific day stirred up questions I hadn’t wanted to face. Is this life all there is? Is there truly evil in this world? Do I serve a purpose?

I’d like to say we started attending church that Sunday, but no. It took me five months of stifling those niggling questions before the aching need, for something I didn’t yet understand, overrode my excuses for why I should stay in bed. My husband and I warily strolled into church. In my mind, I was just going to give it a try.

I left changed.

There wasn’t a bolt of lightning. I didn’t break free from my cocoon and morph into a butterfly during that service. I remember being greeted by a man named Donny who smiled and welcomed us. I recall pausing to look at my husband during worship to see if the live band overwhelmed his instilled Catholic mindset. (He now is the electric guitarist in that band – go figure.) I had laughed and smiled all through the sermon about parenting, and a woman named Laura hugged me on the way out.

We drove back to our same home, in the same car, but I wasn’t the same. My heart held hope. I remember feeling lighter, excited. The earth hadn’t fallen off its axis. For everyone else, the day had been a day just like any other, but the dead shell of my old self had cracked open, and a small sprig of the changed me started to grow.

Easter reminds us of Jesus’s love and the ultimate sacrifice made for us, yet we still go about our week normal. Shouldn’t Easter renew the same feelings of hope and excitement? After being reminded about the cross, how are we not left changed?

Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr said, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” Two thousand plus years after Jesus’s death, the world has changed a great deal, but I beg to differ with Monsieur Karr. We are not the same. Jesus’s resurrection allowed the Holy Spirit to come into the world. It emboldened the disciples and changed hearts. An encounter with the Holy Spirit helps you see others differently and find love where there was none. It prompts you to be moved, be changed, and to love because you are loved. 

Don’t remain unchanged. 

Let the truth about Jesus’s sacrificial love sink into your heart. Steep in the hope it brings and gets excited about the promise of everlasting life with a Lord who’d give everything to have you by His side for all eternity. Realize there is more to life than wake, work, eat, sleep, and repeat. You have a purpose. Become grateful for what God has done for you, in you, and is going to do through you.

“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” Romans 1:20 NLT

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