The More Things Change

The Gettysburg United Methodist church had its Vacation Bible School (VBS) last week.  The Catholic church had theirs next week, with the Lutheran church coming the week after that.  I think Grace Bible church follows the next week, although I’m not sure about that.

Anyway, I hope everyone else’s VBS goes as well as ours did, because ours was great!  I say that not because of anything I did--I was a very small part of the VBS program.  But it was great because we had some great people involved in putting it together.  It was great because we had some great parents who brought their kids to VBS.  And it was great because of the kids themselves, because we had some great kids.

You know, a lot of times you’ll hear middle-aged and older people complaining about the kids of today.  I don’t think that criticism is valid.  Are there some kids today who maybe leave a little something to be desired?  Sure there are.  But was that also true thirty years ago, and fifty years ago, and a hundred years ago?  Sure it was.  And are there some really great kids around today?  You bet!

The world has changed since I was young, obviously.  Have all those changes been good?  No, probably not.  But a lot of them have been.  The technological revolution, while perhaps a mixed blessing in some ways, enables people to have the entire world in the palm of their hand.  Ease of travel makes it possible to get to know people from all over.  Social media is a huge change, sometimes for good, sometimes not.  Young people have to deal with a lot of things that were not even imagined when I was young.

And yet, there’s one thing that has not changed.  God.  God’s word is still available to us.  And God’s Spirit is still available to us.  God still loves us.  God still wants to lead us and guide us and help us through life.  God’s rules for how to live a good life are just as good and just as helpful to us today as they were thousands of years ago.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Do to others as you’d like others to do to you.  Forgive so that you can be forgiven.  Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  None of that has changed.  None of that will ever change.  No matter how long the earth lasts, and no matter how many other things change, none of that will ever change.  As the Bible tells us, God is the same today, yesterday, and forever.

And you know, people are pretty much the same, too.  No matter how much the world changes, people seem to stay pretty much the same.  All the human failings the Bible talks about are still around today.  I can’t think of one that we’ve gotten rid of.  That’s why the Bible is still so relevant to us, of course--we’re still the same flawed, imperfect, sinful people that people have been for thousands of years.

Young people are just as good as they ever were.  Just as bad, too.  And the same could be said of middle-aged people and old people.  We’re all sinners in need of forgiveness and salvation.  And that’s what we get when we believe in God and accept Jesus as the Savior.