When change moves everything around

If you want to watch a person lose a little bit of her mind, send her into a newly rearranged grocery store with five minutes until the bus drops off her child and tell her to find Ziplock bags. Remind her that no one in the store will have any answers and everyone she meets will be irritated by the change. Then let her go and watch what happens. Ask me how I know that it will not be pretty.

I know. It’s a first world problem. Remodeled grocery stores are not high on the list of things we should be worried about as a country. They are not even something we should really be bothered by as a person. We should be grateful that we have a place to go and buy all of our food; anything we need; even Ziplock bags are right there for the taking. Should it really be a big deal that they are on aisle 10 instead of aisle 3?

No, it shouldn’t. But bear with me for a minute.

Everyone was bothered by it. Everyone I met in the store from the sweet checkout clerk to the kind old lady looking for her coffee was scowling and complaining. The maze that the boxes and out of place racks created caused us all to bump right into one another. And not a single person said, “Wow! I am so glad that they have decided to move every item in this store to a different place. It sure is going to be awesome when they finish!” No. We all wanted it put back like it was. We didn’t want the cheese moved.

And changes, big or small, in our own lives, often evoke this same reaction out of us.

Put it back like it was, we beg. Don’t make me have to work to find things! Leave it like I expect it to be ; so I don’t have to think so much!

Truth, right? It’s what we want out of our grocery store as well as our days.

There’s a great little book about the way we deal with change called “Who Moved My Cheese”. It is about mice trying to find cheese in a maze as much as it is about us trying to find our way through a life that never stands still. “Movement in a new direction helps find new cheese,” Spencer, the book’s author, says. “It is safer to search in the maze than to remain in a cheeseless situation” (Spencer).

And maybe you agree. Maybe new cheese is your jam and you’d rush headlong into a grocery store and rejoice over the challenge of not knowing where anything is. If that’s you, send me a note and I’ll send you my shopping list for next week.

But maybe change pulls a different kind of emotion from within you. Maybe life’s changes have knocked the wind right out of you and the thought of navigating another maze without a map is spinning you in circles.

Hard changes can leave us confused, lost and desperate for anything familiar to hold onto.

And we can forget.

We can forget that we aren’t called to navigate life’s maze alone. We can forget that we don’t have to rely on our own senses to sniff out where the cheese has been moved. No. We have someone who promises to go with us; to lead us.

The Bible tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever.”(Hebrews 13:8) and that “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19).

No matter what changes the wind may blow in on our day, we can always, always hold onto Jesus and know that he will walk through the storm with us.

But that can be hard to remember when circumstances are bossing us around and we have no picture for what that might look like.

I went back to the mess of a grocery store this morning determined to find the Ziplock bags and be happy about the search. And amid the stacks of boxes and strange posters pointing to where things might be, I saw the store manager.

He was pushing a buggy, had two lists in his hands and two elderly gentlemen holding onto him. “Okay,” he said, “ground beef, that’s right over here. Let’s go get that and then I’ll show you where we moved the cheese.” The older men nodded and held on as the manager led them through the maze and right to each of their items.

Yeah. Maybe it looks like that.

When life throws change our way, the best thing we can do is hold onto Jesus and let him show us how to go. And once we start walking, our job is to grab others and be the ones who point out the way.

Because who knows what great things the change might bring. God’s imagination is so much bigger than ours. And in the midst of change, we just might find gifts greater than we could have thought up on our own.

I hear the laughter of that manager and those men and I know it to be true.

So here’s to all the changes this day might hold, to being people who lead others to the treasure we have found … and to Ziplock bags, which are now on aisle 5 should you need to know.“God is our refuge and strength an ever-present help in times of trouble” (Psalm 46:1) Sending extra prayers today to those folks in the path of the hurricane. May God protect you and sustain you through this storm.