The Scrambler

By Kathi Woodall  –

Summertime brings outdoor fun as schoolbooks close and amusement parks open. We recently took our two oldest daughters to an amusement park with plenty of thrill rides and good times. They rode “The Scrambler,” a ride with four cars on each of three arms that spin and weave in and out of each other. Just as the earth rotates on its axis as it also revolves around the earth, each group of cars rotates as they also revolve around the central trunk of the ride. My husband and I decided to sit this ride out and waited for them by the exit.

Despite the speed and craziness of their spinning, each time their car spun around so it was facing us, we would make eye contact, smile and sometimes wave. For a brief moment, we would connect and be a stable, non-shifting point in their ride. We were a constant that didn’t change even though their car and every car around them spun wildly.

As I stood there watching and waiting for the next moment when they would face me and our eyes would connect, I thought about how God is a constant reference point for us as we spin around in a crazy world. God doesn’t revolve and rotate like the cars on the ride or the planets in the heavens. Indeed, He created the stars and the planets and set them moving on their paths. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17 NIV).

God’s constancy, absoluteness and stability are displayed in many ways. His unequivocal word will not shift or change. What He has spoken, He will do; what He has promised, He will fulfill (Numbers 23:19). Regardless of how we might be seeing things, God’s covenants will not change and will not be broken (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 7:20-22). The heavens and the earth will wear out and be changed like a piece of clothing but even then God will remain the same (Psalm 102:25-27).

Like the ride my daughters rode, what is spinning in your world right now? In the midst of the in’s and out’s of chaos and craziness, how can you connect with the One who does not change? God’s word, His covenants and His being will not change. Matthew 7 teaches that a wise man builds his life upon these things and finds stability regardless of what swirls around him.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).