Dear Friends,
It seems to me, everything is transitory, even those things we see as bedrock. Even bedrock eventually wears away into sand, silt, and clay. We hang our hats on this or that seemingly solid manifestation but when it turns to sand, as everything does, we are thrown into chaos. The ground shifts beneath our feet and we are put off balance by it. No one has such balance that they are immune. Change is the nature if this universe and that change will always keep us off balance. Our very lives are transitory. We struggle through, trying to be good people, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure as best we can, but in the froth and turbulence of life we only hold on as best we can. The answer is not to be so strong we break, or so weak we fold, but to bend when it is required, have the wherewithal to get back on our feet when we are knocked down, and we must stand hard against the vicissitudes of life we can defeat.
Change is the nature of this universe. Even the stars themselves have limited life spans and so how much less our realities? Once there were dinosaurs roaming the Earth, now they are gone, through no fault of humanity, but because all things have a beginning, a middle and an end. There is nothing other than God that doesn’t follow this pattern. Change is everywhere you look. A billion years from now the Earth will be swallowed by the Sun and life on this planet will become impossible. Nothing is permanent… but change.
Change is the quality of our existence. Perhaps that is why life arose in the first place, because life is nothing but change. Every aspect of life is change. We eat, digest the food and excrete it out, every step is change. We are born, we live and then die, changing the whole time. The very molecules within us change to make our existence possible. Even our thoughts, emotions and spirits exist by changing, thought by the changing of electrons and proteins, emotions by the changing of our fortunes and our spirits grow and thereby change as we age. Life, being so intricately involved with change, is the epitome of the nature of our universe.
Maybe that is why the market system is so effective, it is noting but change. In the free market, innovations changes the way business is done, it changes how things are made and it changes peoples fortunes, some from good to bad and others from bad to good. Those how have it good seek to stop change, through regulations taxes and monopoly, but they struggle against the very nature of our universe. The market system is constantly changing, which puts it in alignment with the nature of the universe, while socialism seeks to stop change, putting it at odds with creation. To contend with the nature of the universe is to fight an unwinnable battle.
To seek to stop change is to seek to stop the universe. You might as well stop the planets from orbiting the Sun. People dislike change however, the weather changes and we go from hot to cold, the seasons change and we go from sowing to reaping, our fortunes change and we go from poverty to wealth or visa versa. Change is difficult for us because it causes disruption, and by definition we must adapt to that disruption, we cannot force it to adapt to us. Innovation is a form of change and therefore is resented by those who are comfortable in the present paradigm. That is why so many of us struggle against change, even to the point of accusing humanity of being the author of change, that is a ludicrous charge since nature is the author, we are merely spectators.
Since change is the nature of the universe, it is the height of foolishness to expect to stop anything from changing. To stop the globe from heating or cooling is to spit in the face of nature, to stop economic innovation is to expect the universe to bend to us, and to demand that morality not change is to be Pollianish. Change sometimes is good and other times it is bad. Changing morality will lead to lower standards of living, persecution and eventually a collapse of our civilization, but that is also change. The best we can do is try to mitigate the negative results of change, or guide it to a better result as best we can, but change is inevitable.
The pendulum of fate swings from good to bad, it cannot be held to good forever, that would violate the nature of our universe. Even the Bible’s description of the Millennial reign says it will change, after a thousand years Lucifer will be loosed on us again, and since the author of the Bible is the same as the author of the universe, change is written into it too. Today the pendulum swings to bad, as it must do, but rest assured, while it will get much much worse, that same pendulum will eventually swing back to good. Only God knows when, but it will. How do I know this? Because change is the nature of the Universe.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
