Virginia has wide temperature variations and quick changes in weather patterns.

Last week, ice and snow covered the ground, and the birds were silent. The whole earth was quiet except for the crunch of my feet on the frozen path.

On my walk yesterday, a bright red cardinal perched on the top of a green pine tree and sang joyfully. Two geese flew so closely overhead I could hear the flap of their wings even before they announced their presence with loud squawks. A mockingbird chanted a litany from a low bush on the side of the path. The rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker drummed from somewhere unseen slightly above me. There was so much activity I laughed and thought, “We need an air traffic controller!”

Much had changed in a short time. Life is the same way sometimes, isn’t it?

I remember working shifts in the ER when car accidents and heart attacks changed lives in an instant. I’ve experienced those same changes at home: one moment a full house of waddling toddlers or noisy teenagers, the next a household of only one. Sometimes change is disconcerting and even frightening. I wonder, “Why can’t things stay the same?”

Life is never the same; that’s one thing we can count on.

But there is something that never changes, or rather someone.  

God never changes, and He never leaves. He’s in the quiet of the gentle snowfall and in the activity of the spring. He’s in the commotion of a full house and the solitude of an empty one. He’s in the moments of sadness and hurt and the ones of joy and laughter. And His love is right there through it all.

No matter how much life changes, God does not.

Thank you, God, for being the same yesterday, today and tomorrow;
for being with me in the joy, the sorrow,
the hectic, the boring, the storms,
the peace – in everything.
Amen.

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