Do you believe that change is possible ...?

Do you believe that change is possible? I mean change in yourself. Or do you think that how you are now is how you will be for the rest of your days? 


When I was in my late thirties - admittedly quite a long time ago now! - I learnt to juggle. Until then, I had lived with a deep belief that I would never be able to juggle but a student at Ripon and York St John said that she could teach me, and in next to no time I was juggling. I was amazed, I was excited. I actually became quite evangelistic about juggling, saying to people that if could learn so could they. Challenged to put that to the test by equally sceptical people, I went on to teach lots of different people, from children upwards, the basics of the art. Now I need to admit that I never went beyond a basic three ball juggle - so some of my protégés went further - but that didn't matter. I had discovered something new about myself. I felt like an aging plant that had just put out a new bud, growing in an unforeseen and unexpected way. 


I believe that we are all like that; that we have never finished "becoming". There is always the chance of some new beginning. Even when we feel totally stuck in our ways, we never really know what is around the corner. I think of Gerry, an old friend who, at the age of eighty, discovered a new, deep faith in God. As a young man he had rejected his Catholic upbringing and become a Marxist. He went through the horrors of a POW camp out in the Far East, which left him with recurrent nightmares. And then, in the last stage of his life he had discovered the love of Christ and it truly changed him. He asked me, why it had taken so long for that to happen. I had no real explanation except to say that sometimes we need to go through a long journey in order to be ready to be open to God. However, Gerry wasn't the oldest person I knew to have that sort of new beginning. As a curate I helped prepare two ladies in their late eighties for confirmation. 


We never know what is round the corner. We never know what part of ourselves is yet to flourish, given the right circumstances. A change of job, the birth of a child, a new home, retirement, a "chance" conversation, the death of a loved one .... all these and more can lead to the start of something new and unexpected. And we never know when God will come knocking on our door. 


So it was for the first disciples on Easter Day. They saw totally unexpected changes happening in their own lives. They would have been the last to believe that hardened fishermen, men of the world, like them, could become confident evangelists and healers, risking - and sometimes giving - their lives for the conviction that God had started something so totally new that it changed everything. For them, resurrection wasn't simply, or even mainly, about faith in life after death. It was about life before death. A life that kept on surprising them with the knowledge that change - for them and for everyone else - was indeed possible through faith in the Risen Lord. 


I wish you a surprising Eastertide! 


David