Change

I’m getting ready for the Church’s Trunk or Treat night. I’m planning to be an old time photographer and will have a booth for children to have their pictures taken in costume.

Photography has changed unimaginably since its beginning. The photographs that I take on Halloween will be taken instantly. The earliest fixed or permanent photographs taken by  Nicéphore Niépce in the 1820s took eight hours or more of exposure. Early daguerreotypes took many minutes of exposure so that only static subjects such as landscapes, buildings, monuments, statuary, and still life arrangements were feasible. Portraits required subjects to face into the sun for several minutes while remaining motionless. In the 1840s, exposure times were reduced to ten to sixty seconds making portraits more practical. It was still necessary for subjects to be immobile. Chairs like he one pictured were designed to help subjects remain still. For the rest of the 1800s, photographic techniques improved but photography was primitive and difficult. Developing photographs exposed photographers to dangerous fumes.

What a contrast to modern photography. We take pictures of everyone and everything and send them around the world in a matter of seconds.

The world and everything in it changes. Change can be overwhelming, confusing, even scary at times. Change brings uncertainty. Someone has said that the only thing certain is uncertainty. Each of us encounters change and uncertainty in our personal lives. Children grow up; jobs are eliminated; people we love pass away. Even change for the better, change that makes us glad, still brings uncertainty with it. We are given the promotion we’ve long desired but wonder, Can I do it? We get the degree we’ve worked for but wonder if it will result in a job.

There is one thing we can be sure about, however. God does not change. Scripture says, “For I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6).  And it says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). We can stake our lives on God’s unchanging nature and his unchangeable word. One of my favorite hymns puts it this way:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand

He is our rock of ages, our anchor that keeps us from being blown away in life’s storms.

in ev’ry high and stormy gale
my anchor holds within the veil. 

The ground of this world is shifting and changing. But we can say, “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.”

In Closing, I say:

Lift High the Cross