On a recent road trip, I got upset over a cookie. You see, while driving across Minnesota, I made my normal pitstop and went to buy my favorite cookie, only to find that the recipe had changed. The cookie I was looking forward to was a thin cookie yet wide in circumference. What I found was a small, thick cookie that didn’t taste the same. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
As I continued my trip, I bemoaned the cookie and my driving time allowed me to ponder all of the other things that have changed around me. Things that I never thought would change like the play-by-play announcer for Twins baseball and the font and layout style of my favorite newspaper. My list of laments went on to include the way shopping malls, checkout lines, telephones, card catalogues, and Saturday cartoons have changed.
I know none of these things are earth shattering and they are hardly worth a fuss. But, they did give me cause for reflection and made me consider what does remain unchanging.
I thought about how through the Prophet Malachi we hear God say that “I the Lord, do not change” (Malachi 3:6). Psalm 136 says time and time again that God’s love is everlasting. In Hebrews we hear that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and always” (Heb 13:8). And James tells us that our Heavenly Father “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). Isaiah reminds us that “the grass withers, the flower fade, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8). And again, from the Psalms we are told that God is “everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 119:90).
With all of that certainty and those assurances of God’s steadfast love, enduring power, and might I chuckled to myself, and with apologies to Dan Schutte (a composer of Catholic liturgical music and a contemporary Christian songwriter), rewrote the words to the popular song “Though the Mountains May Fall.”
I sang, “Though the cookies may crumble and the chips turn to dust yet the love of the Lord will stand!”