Another paradox of life is the fact that change is the only constant. Changes define life and make it possible. Some changes are sudden and cataclysmic, like a strong typhoon. We see the destruction and devastation wrought by it but it is also a call for more changes. It is a call and an invitation to start with a clean slate and make things better, stronger and more beautiful. Other changes are gradual and long-drawn out sea changes, like the evolution of life from single cell organisms to conscious human beings – a process that has taken millions and may be even billions of years. And still others can be designed and managed and made faster because men have learned and mastered some of the changes processes.
And yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Science tells me that all the cells and molecules in my body are changed and renewed every five years. Like, the body I have today is not the same body as when I first came to live in the US five years ago. And yet, in spite of the fact that I have a totally different body, it is the same “I” that lives. My cells my be new but they are still the cells of an old man. A consciousness resides in this body of mine that has a memory of the six decades that I have lived.
I participate in both: the changes and the unchanging. I am alive. I change. I get renewed. And yet, I am the same person that has lived for sixty four years. There is something unchanging that animates all that is and everything that is alive. That animating force is not inanimate for how can something inanimate animate something that is conscious and alive. I know and I believe that that animating force is a person, who is interested personally in who I am and what becomes of me. That is too big and too grand a concept for me to fully grasp and understand. So He revealed Himself to us humans and to me in particular through signs and wonders that we can comprehend. He joined us in our human existence so we can get a glimpse of who and what He is. Another season of Advent begins this week when we celebrate and remember His Incarnation, his taking on our form and existence so we can come to know just a little bit about Him.
Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
Luke 21:5-11