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Risking change

Wayne M. Warner

The nation’s aspirations dwindled, and the people lost hope. They held on, but no one had a song to sing. The last verse of their final hymn concluded, they hung their harps in the willow trees. Their unwillingness to change had overcome them.

One man, a lonely prophet, recognized the nation’s desolation. Watching the suffering of the people, he saw a valley of sun-bleached, parched bones. But Ezekiel remembered earlier days when God had led Israel from slavery into a new land. He knew that God could empower those dry bones to reconnect and live again. If only they would renew their commitment to the God of their fathers, God would liberate them from their history of failure (Ezekiel 37).

Being unwilling to risk change itself becomes risky. The crippled man had heard reports of healing and “hung out” by the pool of Bethesda. But when Jesus came by asking if he wished to get well, the sick man quickly replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred” (John 5:7). Illness often helps us avoid many of life’s burdens. Because of it, we receive deferential treatment (as when Mom whispers to the children, “Let’s not bother Dad; he had a bad day at the office”), and we use it to excuse our self-indulgence. We cling to our illness, our pain, our inability to fulfill responsibility. Like early Israel, we prefer to remain in exile rather than say, “I was wrong.”

As Christians, we need to willingly risk changing what we can change and commit to God what we cannot change. Toward the end of World War II, guards in a Japanese prison camp learned of approaching American troops. They unlocked the gates and fled into the forest, leaving the unsuspecting prisoners behind in their cells. The American troops arrived to free the prisoners from already unlocked doors. Sometimes we live behind doors that may already be unlocked. We could walk free if only we knew the doors were unlocked. Change is God’s specialty. Dry bones will live again – when we allow Him to change us.

Wayne M. Warner lives in Battle Creek, Mich.

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Last modified January 30, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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