"And the LORD did not remove the pillar of cloud or
pillar of fire from its place in front of the people." Exodus 13:22 NLT
She has some age on her, so I call her sometimey.
I love SUVs, so when we bought a new car I decided to
keep driving the one my wife and I had driven for the last three years: a 2002
Ford Explorer with around 250,000 miles on the odometer. I say around because
the odometer is sometimey. It only lights up once in a while.
The air is also sometimey. About a year ago, it
decided it would stop coming out of the top vents and blow only out of the
bottom and dash vents. Rather than a cool upper body, I now keep cold feet. Then
one day, I heard the mechanism open and suddenly air came from the vents it was
supposed to. Four weeks later, it started coming from below again.
And then there's the windows-all electric. They, too,
are sometimey. Sometimes they lower and raise as they are supposed to, sometimes
they lower but won't raise, and sometimes they won't do either. Turning the car
off and re-cranking it sometimes jump starts them. At other times, opening the
door to a certain spot does the trick.
In spite of the sometimey parts on my car, I still
love her. She's been good and is still in good mechanical working order. I've
just learned to put up with her sometimeyness.
But I don't care to serve a God who operates the same
way. And, fortunately, He doesn't. After delivering His people from Egyptian
slavery, God guided them consistently with a pillar of cloud during the day and
a pillar of fire during the night.
God's guidance of His current people mimics His
guidance in the old days. He is the same and never changes. I may come across
incidents recorded in the Bible that seem to imply God changes, but that is only
me trying to understand God from a human perspective. God doesn't change His
plans, character, or eternality.
What seems like change falls under the term
sovereignty. In human time, it may appear God has changed, but whatever it is
was already in God's mind from the beginning.
Most importantly, God won't change His mind about
salvation, forgiveness, and eternity. Once we accept Him, we are His. Period. He
won't take back the forgiveness of our sins He freely gave.
When you can't depend on anything or anyone else, you
can always depend on God.
John Stuart Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
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