July/August

A great summertime activity for young children is catching frogs. Hours can be spent with this activity and children of every era have tried it. But there is an interesting fact about frogs. A frog dropped in hot water will jump out immediately; but place a frog in a pan of cool water and he simply relaxes. With a frog relaxed in cool water you could gradually heat up the water around it. The frog will contentedly sit there until the water was heated to the point where he would simply boil to death. Now I’m not recommending that anyone try this, and I haven’t either; but it serves as an illustration as to how things can be in our spiritual life. We can easily become so content with living our lives just the way we always have, that we won’t even care to move, change, or grow at all. Of course we may not realize it, but that contented attitude can eventually kill us.

This does not only happen in individual lives, but can also happen on a larger scale. Whole congregations have died and passed out of existence by simply living a life with little or no change. Now change is hardly ever comfortable, but it is necessary. Could you imagine or even survive without some of the changes that have taken place throughout the centuries? Here’s one example imagine someone in your home has a heart attack and needs immediate medical attention. Because of changes that have occurred in technology, simply picking up a phone and dialing 911 could swiftly bring the attention your loved on needed and be the difference between life or death for them. Now you could say that people of a different age didn’t have these conveniences and got along fine. Consider though that many of those could have been saved or been spared debilitating consequences or even death had those advances been available to them. Now changes just for the sake of changes may not always be advantageous; but some changes within our lives and the life of our congregation may be the difference between life and death. The next time a change is recommended, before you just dismiss it, pray about it and openly consider whether certain changes might benefit us in our congregation. We may have opportunities arise that will ask us to change. When we do, consider the lesson of the contented frog. Perhaps we may need to jump out of our relaxed sameness and try something different. May God bless you this summer. Give some thought and prayer to how we might start changing for the better in the future.

In Christ,

Pastor David

 

         

revdnuss@msn.com