I used to work for someone who regularly said that ‘change is here to stay’ and who would remind us that change is inevitable in life and so you needed to get used to it! Attitudes to change vary greatly, largely because we all have different personalities.
Some people love changing things: hairstyles, clothes, furniture, houses, cars. They are always up for change. They embrace change with fervour and excitement, enthusiasm and optimism. They love the challenges and the sense of opportunity and freshness which change brings. These people are very often eager and keen to do things differently and are impatient with routine, finding it boring. They are often pioneers and visionary people, always ready to move on. If they see a door, they want to open it and run through, even if they have no idea what’s in the room behind the door.
Some people find change much more difficult to manage. They like routine and predictability; they find constant change challenging and are maybe much more apprehensive about change. They worry about what will happen when things change, perhaps even finding some truth in the proverb ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.’ These people are often a little bit reluctant to change and can even be pessimistic about it. If optimists are like Tigger in the ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ stories, people who find change difficult are more like the donkey Eeyore. If they see a door, they will probably want to know what’s behind the door before they will consider opening it, let alone going through it.
Many of us are perhaps somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. We are open to the idea of change and perhaps excited about some changes, but are perhaps a little bit nervous about big changes. We might hesitate at an open door, but we’re not going to rule out going through it; we just need a little bit of encouragement and reassurance.
We can be sure that God will only allow change into our lives for our ultimate good. All change can be used by God to draw us closer to Him and to move us further forward, even the changes we perhaps would not choose for ourselves. Paul found that even closed doors were simply signposts to the correct open door (see Acts 16:6-10). We can be confident that God will open doors for us in His time and in His way and that change will lead us forward: as Stephen said recently, ‘Onward, Christian soldiers, marching on to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.’