We’ve experienced many changes in our lives since the beginning of March. The coronavirus crisis has negatively affected everything from our ability to work to our ability to worship in our parish churches. Understandably, many people have had great difficulty dealing with these changes, because they’ve been so radical and so numerous. One of the keys to finding a measure of peace in the midst of all this chaos is to take our focus off the changes that are disturbing us, and put it on those things that we know, by faith, do NOT change — and never will.
In John 3:16 Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” That one, simple line of Scripture reminds us of at least three things that never change. The first is God’s love for us. His love is total, faithful and unconditional. The second is the effects of Jesus’ saving work. God “gave his only-begotten Son” to the world so that he could suffer and die and thereby destroy the power of sin and Satan and eternal death. Jesus fulfilled that mission perfectly — and no one can ever change that fact.
It’s the reason we can go to heaven — which is the third unchangeable truth that we see in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
God’s love; the saving work of Christ; the promise of eternal life. Meditating on unchangeable truths like these will not make the coronavirus crisis go away, but it will definitely help us to deal more effectively with the many distressing changes that it’s causing in our daily lives.
