A New Creation

Some experiences will change you so profoundly that you are a new person, a new creation, when you come out the other side. Parenthood is a perfect example of this. You come to the experience as a woman or a man and you are transformed into something new: a parent. You will never not be a parent again. You will never be a former parent. You are a new creation.

Other experiences will only change your lifestyle. Changes in technology, natural disasters, relocating, or increases or decreases to your income will all change your lifestyle but in most cases will not yield a new creation.

Resisting either kind of change is probably impossible, and nearly always counterproductive. So why do we do it?  Why don't we simply embrace change?  What is it that we fear: a change to our lifestyle or a change to who we are?  I suspect we fear the former more than the latter and I wonder if it should be the other way around.

We who follow the resurrected Christ call ourselves Easter People. This implies that we believe that we can become new creations. Shouldn't it also imply that we will embrace change, because we understand that it leads to life, and away from the place where there is not change - death? In fact, don't we, as Easter People, embrace the idea that even death itself leads to new life, to a newly created way of being? We bring our children to be baptized, seeking to bring them to new life as children of God. We Easter People should be the very model of what embracing change looks like!

Yet, we all grumble when things change. Change is hard, frightening and uncertain. Yet, if nothing ever changed we would cease to grow.  We are Easter People. We are baptized children of God. We are, in fact, a new creation. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!