And All of a Sudden -

Change often comes so gradually that we don't even recognize when it happens. It gently rolls over us, marking us in subtle ways, until, like an ancient river viewed hundreds of years later, we are completely different. Then there are those changes that strike like a tsunami, wiping out every trace of the familiar and changing the landscape in such sweeping and monumental ways that we know there is no way back, we are forever altered. One thing that is constant about change (funny that there could be anything constant about change!) - you will face it, you will see it, and it will make you different. There's no fighting it, for even in the fighting, you will be altered. So I was praying for the powerful kind of change to come one night during our youth church. I am the impatient sort. I want so see things happen NOW. I want the job done NOW. I want the progress NOW. But guess what? GOD granted one more night in which the changes were subtle and the river remained calm - moving, flowing, washing, and shaping all under the surface and out of my sight. And yet, I caught a glimpse. Just a fleeting moment of insight where I could see the river's foundation move. It is for that glimpse that I will keep on doing what I do in the lives of our teenagers.