The Great Transition

Change is inevitable. I attended a college friend’s wedding this past Saturday afternoon in Taylors, South Carolina. The day was beautiful, sunshine and a cool breeze, the kind of day that makes you want to be outside just to be outside, the wedding was on par with the day. Because the bride was a college friend the wedding was in some ways like a reunion, bringing together familiar faces and nostalgic feelings. It was although I stepped into another world that was existing with the same external makeup and at the same pace in space and time, but with different persons occupying the people that I once knew. People had changed (by changed I do not mean that they were better or worse, just different.). Growth, including physical, emotional, spiritual, etc., happens in life and will happen no matter how we may try to stop it. We are all moving towards one end or another regardless of how we perceive ourselves. I think that what happens is the change that occurs appears to be amorphous to those in whom the change takes place. This is primarily because most change takes place over time and is not instantaneous (This is not to say that change can never be instantaneous, only that it appears to me that most often it happens over time). Here is an example; lets say I want to lose weight so I join a gym and begin to diet. At the beginning of this venture you leave to go to China for a year. When you return you visit me and (for the sake of the example) I have lost 100 pounds. You are amazed by the change that has taken place; however, for me I do not see my weight as a change because I did not lose the weight all at once. For a time I was 280 pounds, then 260 pounds, then 245 pounds, all the way down to 180 pounds. In hindsight, I can see major changes, but not during the transition; however, isn’t life on earth one big transition. Here is another example, a friend is overseas doing mission work, I suppose that when he returns he will have grown spiritually and I will see that in his life. However, he won’t know how much he has grown because it was not instantaneous, he had no definitive point of reference in his mind and the people that he was around were growing/changing too. Its like when your on the interstate and everyone is going the same speed, it does not appear that you are moving very fast; however, to those stopped on the overpass you are flying. All this to say that those friends who seemed to change a great deal probably thought the same of me, although I do not think that I changed. But, I have. Hopefully it is for the better.