I don’t know about the rest of the country, but the weather is lousy in Indianapolis today. So lousy, in fact, that the powers that be moved Halloween. That’s right. They moved Halloween. Now I am 60 years old and for the life of me, I can’t ever remember having trick or treat cancelled because of the weather. In fact, I remember being in my costume and having to wear a winter coat because it was so cold, or carrying an umbrella because it was raining so hard. But I never remember the day being changed. If you didn’t get to trick or treat, tough luck. You missed it until next year – case closed.
In our neighborhood, kids would start making the rounds around dinner time – it wasn’t just from 4:30 to 6:30 – and the passing out of candy went well into the evening. We didn’t have malls inviting us to travel there and gather candy in each store and Lord knows that we ate everything that we received. And that included popcorn balls and taffy apples and just about every other thing, unwrapped or otherwise, that we could gather. It is a wonder that we every survived.
But today, we do things differently. We change Halloween because it’s raining. Come to think of it, we also have the movement of many days in the calendar to Mondays because people want more consecutive days off. Holidays that used to be celebrated in the middle of the week suddenly get moved to Friday or Monday. Things just don’t mean as much as they did years ago. The sanctity of many things has just changed.
What would it be like if God had moved? It’s been said for years that if you don’t feel close to God, it’s because you moved – not the Father. And how upset would we be if Christmas was moved because it didn’t snow, or Thanksgiving was moved because there was a football strike and sports minded folks couldn’t watch the games. Luckily, that isn’t the case. For sure, God is steadfast and He doesn’t move. In fact, heaven and earth remain in His grasp at all times – and that’s rock solid.
The verse for this evening speaks to the steadfastness of God. We are told, in Col. 2:5, “For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.” Obviously, this passage affirms that Christ isn’t physically among us, but always resides in us and with us through the Holy Spirit. In other words, He is dependable and doesn’t move away or change. My encouragement is that you will take heart and remain calm in the knowledge that God will never change. My prayer is that you will be that steadfast to God and that He can depend on you as much as you can depend on Him. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…