WORD OF THE WEEK - UNCHANGING - 6/1/2025

Definition: UNCHANGING - describes something that is constant, stable, or invariable, without variation or transformation.
Scriptures:
Isaiah 40:8 – "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever."
Hebrews 13:8 – "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
James 1:17 – "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."

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Website: www.wow-newton.com
Email:  osnewton@wow-newton.com

Transcript

Definition: UNCHANGING - describes something that is constant, stable, or invariable, without variation or transformation.
Scriptures:
Isaiah 40:8 – "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever."
Hebrews 13:8 – "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
James 1:17 – "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."
THOUGHT
Time is filled with swift transition,Naught of earth unmoved can stand,Build your hopes on things eternal,Hold to God’s unchanging hand.
Hold to His hand, God’s unchanging handBuild your hopes on things eternal,Hold to God’s unchanging hand.
Theselyrics are from the song “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand” written in 1906 by Jennie Wilson and Franklin L. Eiland.  The song reminds us that while the world changes, God remains the same.  Although we may look back on their era as “simpler”, they too experienced tremendous upheaval and rapid change.
The line “Time is filled with swift transition” was written during a period that was anything but calm. The late 19th Century was the start of the industrial revolution; the women’s suffrage movement, the first powered flight and the scientific discovery of x-rays and radioactivity.  Add to that the economic panic of 1893 that caused bank failures and wide-spread unemployment, urban migration from farms to cities, wars in America, Russia,   and Spain, and natural disasters from San Franciso to Texas. 
And then, just like now, people were grappling with the implications of new technology. The ability to capture and share global events through photography and film may have caused as much fear and uncertainty in their time as artificial intelligence and digital and global connectivity do in ours.
While today’s generation has grown up immersed in technology and stored in the cloud, the children of the 1960s and 70s witnessed some of history’s most transformative shifts.What was once imagined as fiction in print became a digital, cloud-based reality—one that continues to accelerate in its evolution. Humanity is facing unprecedented change with rising concerns about whether the transformations we have created can be controlled."
But just as the song writer considered their time and their conditions as subject to not only change, but instability and decay, the hymn reminds us that God, the creator of humanity and all that inhabit the earth, is the stabilizing force that NEVER CHANGES.
“Build your hope on things eternal”!
What are those eternal  hings, you ask?- Truth where Jesus said in John 14:6- "I am the way, the truth, and the life.”- Love –1 Corinthians 13:8 reminds us that "Love never fails."- Faithfulness – Hebrews 13:8 –declares that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."- Justice – Luke 4:18-19 that says"The Spirit of the Lord has anointed Jesus to …to set at liberty those who are oppressed."
The hymn not only encourages us to endure but to reach for what will last:
Covet not this world’s vain richesThat so rapidly decay,Seek to gain the heavenly treasures,They will never pass away.
When your journey is completed,If to God you have been true,Fair and bright the home in gloryYour enraptured soul will view.
No matter how the world changes; God’s remains unchanged.  In these uncertain times, hold on tightly — TO GOD’S UNCHANGING HAND!