By Megan Reimer, Student Writer
OTTERBURNE, MB – As I sit in my dorm room, I look out over Providence. I take a minute to notice what I typically take for granted yet is so fragile and everchanging. A blue sky filled with clouds that float sleepily past my window. Green trees that will soon turn to all my favourite fiery colors. The bell tower, glistening like gold in the early evening sun. I am surrounded by friends that I made last year at this time. I am surrounded by new students that God has already filled my heart with so much love for. There is excitement and anxiety and warmth in this place. I hear the faint sounds of laughter and voices through thin walls. In these sounds, I hear a return to something old, but also the beginning of something new. This is Providence. This is home.
As we begin a new season in more ways than one, we are once again reminded of the inescapability of change. It’s hard to imagine you can avoid it as you straddle the fence between summer and autumn. Truthfully, change in all its facets terrifies me, and I don’t think I’m the only one. Change shakes us to our core and jeopardizes any false stability. It is the tide coming in, threatening to destroy every single one of our castles in the sand. This tide reeks of inevitability because it is coming whether we accept it or not. As I have been weathered by different seasons of life, I have often imagined myself as a small and helpless tree. This tree is wrecked by winter snow, fed by lush rains, embraced by summer sun, abandoned by fall leaves. There is so much helplessness in this picture. My breath catches in my throat as I spiral, realizing I am totally out of control and always have been. I think of my community, those I love, and the larger world I live within. Is it really all that breakable?
However, we realize as we hold the hand of our Creator that this is not the full picture. The tree analogy falls flat in the presence of a good and sovereign Lord. In God’s Presence, we can ask the question: what if change didn’t have to shake us? What if we were rooted in something deeper and more solid than the happenings of our lives? The answer to this question is what wakes me up every day, what makes life safe enough to keep going on. We are rooted in love, forever. There will always be new seasons, new challenges, and new excitements. There will always be fire and water, mountains and valleys. Yet – there is peace in knowing that our God is in control, that He is the one changing our world and lives. Nothing is stable or safe apart from God. As we read in God’s word, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NLT). I may live in a world that is changing, but I am held by a God who is never changing.
In addition to a sense of safety, I believe that God desires to work even deeper by shifting our fear into anticipation for what He will do. After all, He is the God of seasons, the God whose hand is active in creation in wonderful ways. And what are we, His children, if not new creation? We would be lost to sin if not for God’s gracious and constant renewal. He is always moving in our lives and changing the landscape around us. As people who live afraid of change, God is shouting out: look at all these beautiful new things I am doing! Look, I am working in new ways with every sunrise. I am active in your life. I am bringing a fresh wind, a new breath. I am everything you have ever waited for; I am here. As I look around campus, I know that God is working new and beautiful things at Providence. From new classes and faces to new trees and skies every morning, we see His hand in it all, the same hand that has sustained Providence all these years despite a changing world. Let us hold this hope and stability as we cross the bridge to a new season at Providence.
