Change and Decay
You are changing as your eyes move over these sentences. You are aging. You are on your way to death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.
You will not be the same after you finish reading this post. I don't mean that the words and thoughts will profoundly move you; I simply mean that you will change.
In the time it takes your eyes to scan these 387 words, you will be older, and therefore your body will be further along in its gradual, inevitable demise. Perhaps a hair or two will fall off; skin cells will die and be replaced by others; your eyesight dim; wrinkles deepen and lengthen; the enamel on your teeth thin.
Although these changes will be so profoundly minute that the loss defies measurement, it nevertheless remains true.
You are changing as your eyes move over these sentences. You are aging. You are on your way to death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.
But even if you read this post a million times over, there is someone beside who will not change. He is to your left and right. Above you and below you. Before you and behind you. Inside and outside you. He thoroughly envelops you with his presence.
He too has a body like yours, but his body is different, and it is finished with change. It changed from a fetus to a crying newborn; from a newborn to a toddler; from a toddler to a pimpled teen; from a teen to a robust man; and from a man to a flogged, thorned, impaled, deblooded cruciform victim bereft of life. And, then, after a triad of days, he underwent the final change: from an interred victim to a resurrected victor. No hairs fall off. No skin cells die. His eyes penetrate heaven and earth. Even the scars from nail and spear are dazzling, trophies of love.
He will not change, either in body or heart. He has said it once, and his announcement remains unalterable: “You are mine. I have bled for you. I will never leave you or forsake you. Though you are on your way to death, you are not, for in my death you already died. In my resurrection you already rose. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.”
“Change and decay in all around I see,
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
He has, he does, and he always will, changeless in unfathomable mercy.
