The very well-known hymn ‘Abide with me’ says change and decay in all around I see, O thou who changest not, abide with me.
There is a pattern associated with change which is summarised by the ‘Kubler-Ross change curve’. Several stages are involved from (initial) shock and denial through anger or frustration, bargaining and depression to acceptance. Acceptance includes experimentation, decision making and integration. Yes, this is management speak but yes, too, it is part of the reality of how we work as people. Henry Francis Lyte described in a phrase what the first four phases are about; what seems like decay, or collapse. Life’s little day ebbs out.
Sooner or later we come out of the low point and start to take positive steps to get going again, to accommodate what must alter and make the best of it. Planned change is usually aiming at a better place than that from which the ‘journey’ started.
Lyte was aiming for the high point; the skies beyond the gloom, life beyond death, heaven’s morning.
Just at the moment many people are finding it hard to cope, with levels of depression and other mental health problems alarmingly high all around us. Whether we are watching or suffering, many of us are struggling. It is easy to dismiss simple things like lines and verses from old hymns as trite, or dated in their language, but I never cease to feel positive about life and the future when I read (or one day sing again):
Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
Heaven’s morning breaks and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
A prayer
Lord, strengthen our faith so that whether we are victims or survivors of life’s challenges we remember that we are all equally recipients of the promise that your eternal life will be there for us if we trust the sacrifice behind the cross. In these difficult days for many, may all of us be helped to see through the gloom to the hope of heaven’s morning. Great Spirit within and around us, keep us strong for Jesus Christ’s sake.
Amen.