This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in the wake of the UK’s political situation.
The Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan once wrote “the times they are a-changing”. I think he was probably thinking of the particular times in which he was living. But, it now sounds like a statement of the obvious. Time is always changing. That’s the point of it.
But, an equally famous hymn, often sung at Cup Finals and funerals, contains the miserable line: “Change and decay in all around I see,” implying that the two go together – that change is inevitably sad.
Well, events of the last few years should really put this into perspective. A week or two ago I was in Germany, taking part in events in what – not so long ago – was the Communist East. The bipolar post-war world I and my German friends grew up with seemed “just the way the world is”. Yet, now, Germany is united, the Soviet Union has gone, Donald Trump is in the White House, we are leaving the European Union, migration has changed everything, stability has become a fantasy for most people, and the future looks fragile and uncertain.
Which just shows that reality trumps certainty every time. And the promise of certainty often proves to be a fantasy.
I can never escape this. The starting point of Christian faith is a coming to terms with mortality. From dust we have come, and to dust we shall return. All life is like the grass that grows and gets blown away by the wind. Everything has its season, so don’t get caught up in the vain pursuit of … er … vanity. Faith is not an escapist holding on to a way of seeing the world that defies reality; rather, it can be described as a lens through which reality is recognised and faced – without fear.
In other words, we need to live with humility in the face of what might be possible – as what might be possible does not always coincide with what we might find desirable or convenient. Change is a constant, and an achievable vision has to be able to respond to it.
So, the hard question has to do with what roots us while we and everything around us changes? If my life is the relentless chasing after security or perpetuity – what someone called “gaining the world but losing one’s soul” – I might well be very disappointed. Jesus never seduced anyone into following him, but invited them to go with him on a journey that could lead anywhere – even to a cross.
One theologian wrote: “God is our happiness. God is our torment. God is the wide space of our hope.” We don’t know what the future holds. It is uncertainty that is normal. We have to learn to embrace it.
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