Certainty Amid Change

LOCH A TUATH NEWS December 2001

It seems just a moment ago that we were awaiting the year 2000; now we are two years further down the road, and faced, unbelievably, with another New Year.

And what a year it has been! We will all be taking stock of the changes that 2001 has brought into our lives, and particularly of deaths and tragedies that have affected us, both locally and internationally. We lost our oldest church member this year, and her son, our former headteacher, some four months later. Some families lost loved ones particularly unexpectedly -- in some cases, more than one member of their family. Others end the year with tragedy. And not a part of the world was unaffected by the events of September 11th, and the collapse of these icons of prosperity and materialism: New York's landmark Twin Towers.

Well might Henry Francis Lyte write "Change and decay in all around I see." Our lives are subject to the laws of flux and of alteration. We are creatures of routine and of habit, yet hardly a day goes by without a reminder that our best moments in life are not for ever -- there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

And so it is that we are thrown back upon the unchanging and unchangeable doctrines of the Gospel, which remain our sure foundation and our unshakeable hope. The Bible itself uses the analogy of an anchor, when it talks of the work of Christ and his being in Heaven as the anchor of our souls, both sure and steadfast. Boats may be tossed this way and that while winds blow and waves rage; but if their mooring is secure, they are safe. What matters in these situations is not what the boat and the water are like, but what the anchor and the ground are like.

So, amid the changes which 2001 has brought, and the uncertainties which 2002 raise before us, we cast our anchor, first, onto the person of Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Later this month, in celebrations of his birth, incarnation and advent, the world will freeze him in scenes of nativity. But Jesus is more than Bethlehem -- he is Galilee, and Jerusalem, and Golgotha. He is not only the manger, but the baptism, the transfiguration, the cross, and, supremely, the empty tomb. He remains a Saviour, not simply in the first step of his humiliation, but in the fulness of his Mediatorial glory.

We anchor our lives, secondly, in the proclamation of the Gospel: in the heralding of the same doctrines of grace proclaimed in our pulpit for over a century. We anchor our hopes in justification, adoption, sanctification, regeneration, conversion, glorification. We come to our clouded skies anticipating the rainbow of God's covenant promise. And we lift our eyes to the God of the ancient hills, from whom our help alone can come.

And we anchor our souls, thirdly, in the confidence that "Our God Reigns!" He is Lord of history, as he is Lord of our lives and our conscience. He knows all things, and in the confidence that his throne and rule and kingdom extend over all that there is, we go forward knowing that his throne is sovereign.

May such a hope be ours on the eve of a new year.