To Trust a Change

“I felt like a changed man through the love of Jesus.”

Caleb, in his baptismal speech, August 2019

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Dear Alex,

A changed man. In love with Jesus. How does this change, this love feel?

Two Sundays ago, I was gifted with the rarified joy of weeping with you and your families and friends over the baptism of the young man closest to your heart. He has chosen the best gift for himself and all - the change to love the Perfect Lover. In his baptismal speech of 660 words, he spoke of “love” 4 times, “change” 5 times, “relationship with God” twice. For once, he was immersed in the Burrard Inlet by the pier. To infinity, he arose with a new tongue, his language of love changed, beauty beyond form.

Is there any vocabulary that can add more meaning to this moment of change declared in water between land and sky?

I know you love the sea. The storm and gale intrigue you more. And we know the young man and hearts changed are sailing headlong towards high waves. The deeper you love, the greater you shall sacrifice, change and cry. No script, no scheme, no cruise riding. And more often, we may not feel love or loved.

Tonight, after 2 years of yielding to more failures than faith, I have at last managed to bake a chocolate pound cake with an alluring dome of fluff and flavor. I knew I have reached my baking epiphany when my daughter snatched two slices for school tomorrow.

Please don’t laugh but this pound cake has been the product of gut-twisting, knees-on-floor, mindful, mean changes over multitudes of trials - an extra pinch of this for that, the lesser of a splash in that for this, yolk baptized in melted plant-based butter, changes vowed in batter between counter and ceiling. Then high wind arose to the roaring of mixing blades before all forms pooled in a bread pan ready for heat high enough to break up and build new bonds at the molecular scale. A changed loaf.

You know the change without words to show. You can sniff it, taste the change, live it in flour in flesh, in love in wind, on warts and cliffs. A man changed and changing men.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

Thank you for picking a quote from my son.  I thought he would be embarrassed, but apparently he was quite delighted.

I want to be cynical and say no one ever changes.  Just forget about it, "the ever present possibility of change," throw the idea out of the window.  We will all die the way our living prophesies it.  There might be circumstantial surprises, but the moment we cross the big divide we'll all say to ourselves, "I told you so."  We don't run the system; the System runs us.

Then I would invite ridicule to say the only change possible is through Jesus Christ.  A very religious statement from a not very religious person, not religious enough to bear the easy brunt of lazy mockery.

But we have yet to define "change", don't we?

I mean water turning into wine, happening right in front of our eyes, a hope a dream a longing becoming flesh and blood--our flesh, our blood, starting right here, right now, our old selves dying already, heavenly possibility breaking into our earthly musts and have-beens.

Have you ever seen something like this happening in a person, "a glimpse of God's glory" that calls out of us before anything else a trust, finally, in something true?

"Jesus is the answer to all our questions, and He questions all our answers."  I was speaking to my son this morning about the importance of a good diet, and somehow talked ourselves into some Jesus truth.  "Your body, you see, God created it and loves it so much.  He loves how it moves, every little joint of it.  He created you and called you 'good.'  Now don't you eat yourself into disbelieving Him."

Yours, Alex