A Change Would Do You Good

Is it time for a change? I think that you would all agree that something different, something different than the usual would be nice.

You might be ready for a change if you are someone that is afflicted. The afflicted have been forced to face reality and reality can be a little harsh. Sometimes, life is just hard and you are wore out and about worn down. You are concerned about your family, starting with your marriage, for sure your children or maybe also your grandchildren. It would be nice if things would change.

The afflicted look at their city and see the obvious problems: grinding poverty for many and the low-lives that are produced by that environment. The afflicted go to work and find that positions of responsibility have been given to the irresponsible and those beneath them must bear the brunt of it. The afflicted care about their country and the cost in lives and dollars of prolonged wars. The afflicted were caring about the earth long before climate change became a household word. They seem never to be satisfied. Plus, they give us more reality than we want to face. In short, the afflicted are a pain in the butt.

But you also might be ready for a change if you are one of the comfortable. The trick to being comfortable is to deny the reality that is around you. For the most part, the afflicted are right about reality, so to be comfortable you have to insulate yourself from them. If you could, you would build a bubble around your family. You would do it with the neighborhood you choose to live in or the schools that your kids attend or even the church that you go to.

If you are among the comfortable, you go to church or tune in the TV preacher — not for a dose of reality — but to be told that everything is alright. That everything is just going to get better and better. “ God is in his heaven, all is right with the world. All you need to succeed is a positive attitude and some good advice. If you are among the comfortable you sing “God Bless America” and mean it. That’s what you want God to do: bless you as is. So when government officials try to create their own reality, you tolerate that.

When you are trying to escape reality, you end up escaping from everything. It is called “repression”. In order to believe that everything is alright for family, church, job, city, country, and world; there has to be repression. There cannot be dissent. If possible, keep silent. The problem with repression is that you keep things in, to yourself. You keep pushing those thoughts and feelings down, until you stop feeling altogether.

So it may be time for a change. You’ve done your best to try and keep things from changing. You’ve held on as long as you can, but everything changes anyway and threatens to turn to dust and ashes in your hands. You have made safe choices all along. “Better to be safe than sorry.” You’ve chosen to do the right thing in most cases, but instead of that making you a better person, it has just made you a boring, predictable, repressed person. It might be time for a change. As Sheryl Crowe sings: “A change would do you good.”

Better still is the song once sung at the gates of Jerusalem which echoes the song of the angels at Christmas: “Glory to God in the Highest”. This sentiment is the opposite of “God Bless America”. Here, the direction of the blessing is changed from downward to upward. What is supposed to come down is peace and good will, not just for some, but for all. In Biblical history, whenever this song or something like it is sung, it means that there is going to be a change, usually “regime change”. The powers that be are going to have to give way to God.

Most often, this means that the afflicted will be comforted and the comfortable will be afflicted. But this just might be welcome in all quarters, since a change would do everybody good.