Change

As the clock was about to strike midnight, marking the end of the twentieth century and bringing us into the twenty-first century, there was concern that all the computers running our world would crash because they wouldn’t know which century they were operating in. When we awakened on January 1, 2000, our world was relatively normal, but it didn’t take long for things to change.

On September 11, 2001, the twin towers in New York City came tumbling down, all air travel was stopped for two days, and airport security changed forever. The year 2008 saw a big dip in our economic well-being, and 2020 began the life-changing worldwide pandemic. We find dramatic life-changing events in the Bible too.

First, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from their perfect garden home into a world of thistles and weeds; then, a worldwide flood changed life for Noah and family. Job, the greatest man in the east, loved and obeyed God and avoided evil.

In the short amount of time it took to tell his story, he went from being the richest servant of God to a broken man with a distraught wife and three judgmental friends (Job 1:14–22). Joseph, the indulged son of the favorite wife of Jacob, was used to being favored. He had the nicest coat of all the brothers.

He stayed home while the brothers pastured the animals.

He thought his dreams about family members bowing to him would delight the rest. But suddenly, while on a mission for his father to take supplies to his brothers and get a report of the flocks, his brothers seized him, threw him in a pit, and sold him to traders going to Egypt (Genesis 37). Daniel, of the king’s seed and of the princes, was suddenly taken captive and marched from Judah to Babylon.

There, he and his friends were put into the palace and served royal food. They asked for simple food and promised to prove that it would make them healthier. Their experiences varied from being sentenced to death with the other wise men to his friends being thrown into the fiery furnace and then Daniel being cast into the lions’ den (Daniel 2; 3; 6). As we face future monumental change, let us ponder the strength of those before us who depended on God to get them through life-shattering experiences and follow their examples.

Elizabeth Versteegh Odiyar