Try to place yourself in the following scenarios: You need to break a large bill into smaller ones, so you keep asking people if they "can make change." Or another time when paying for something, a cashier hands you a few small coins and you say "keep the change." Or perhaps on another occasion you see a penny or two lying on the side walk, but neglect to pick up the change off the ground because after all, "its only a penny." But have you ever been in the process of paying for something only to find out you could not pay the exact amount because you were a few cents short? It seems there is some change we want, and others we don't.
I find the concept of change very interesting. Change, or a desire for it, seems to be a driving force behind American culture. We never seem to be quite satisfied with what we have, we must have something different. It seems that the vast majority of prayers center on the idea of God changing the current circumstance or situation; that God would bring about something new. This in and of itself is not interesting, in fact you may have already observed that yourself, or even prayed that God would change something multiple times today (I know I did). What I find interesting is how so many people do not handle changes in their life very well. Change, the very thing that most people want or even desire, causes so many to freak out when it actually happens. I think this freak out happens for the most part because deep down the change we want would affect outside factors such as other people or situations or environments; but the change we are usually faced with affects us, or would cause us to change. I think this is where the problem lies. We would love for other people to change, but its a little harder when we are the ones who need to change. But the Jesus I follow calls for the latter.
In the Gospel of Matthew the disciples are out on the lake at night and the wind starts picking up. Before you know it a storm ensues and the waves start whipping the boat all over the place. Now it doesn't say this in the text, but I know that if I was in a boat, at night, during a storm, and far from land, I would be afraid and praying for something to change. And wouldn't you know it, Jesus shows up, walking out to them on the water. They cry out to him, but he does not calm the storm at this point. He does something strange (as if walking on water is not strange enough), he calls Peter to walk out into the storm. So peter steps out of the boat, starts walking towards Jesus, notices that the storm hadn't changed, and freaks out in a sinking panic. Luckily Jesus was still there to save Peter. So we see the disciples pray for change that night, and God shows up to enact change. But he does not change the situation, he calls Peter to change.
Peter freaked out, like many of us, because it appeared that nothing changed. His situation/circumstances had not changed: there was still a life threatening storm. What he failed to realize was that he was walking on the stormy waters, or in a sense he was in more control of the situation than he was before. He was walking (with the help of Jesus of course) on and over what he wanted to change. He didn't get the change he wanted, his situation was virtually the same, but the change he got, him making a change, was more powerful. We may not get the change we want, but when we change it is more powerful. It will never seem like the better option as long as we are still looking at the situation we wanted changed, but it will if we focus on the change Jesus is calling us to make.
Only problem is: that's hard to do.
Most of the time we want big changes, and we are disappointed when we don't change in those big ways. But I don't think it is always supposed to be a huge change. I think we have to start small. I think it starts by picking up the change on the sidewalk, so that when the time comes, we will have exactly what we need. I think we need to stay alert to how Jesus is calling us to change personally, because when we do, he can work through us to bring about change to the situation. Maybe I'm on to something, or maybe this is just another musing of a modern-day sasquatch...
