News

Every now and then a particular word strikes me for one reason or another. It doesn’t have to be a unique word. It may or may not be the kind of word that finds its way into SAT tests; neither its quality nor its sophistication really matter.

Today the word that struck me is “stage.” It has many uses, not all related. A stage is a platform of one sort or another upon which actors perform or musicians play their instruments or singers sing their songs. Back in the day you could be transported from places like Omaha, Nebraska to Denver, Colorado via a stage of the Wells Fargo variety. Realtors frequently stage a house to put it on the market for sale. You and I say things such as, “There is no need to do that at this stage.” See some of the different usages?

A stage then can be something in place. It can be a verb and an activity. A stage can be something in motion. It can be a place or a place in time as in “not at this stage”.
Stage is a multi -purpose word. It has its origin in an old Latin word meaning to stand in place. Like many words, its use and meaning have evolved over the centuries.

Language in general and the word stage in particular stand in place as examples of how you and I also evolve over our lifetimes. You are not the same person you were a decade or so ago. You will not be the same person after another decade passes. Much of it has to do with what happens to us over time; that is what life does to us over the years.

Much of it also has to do with what God does to us over time often with and through those experiences that continue life’s constant molding, meddling, and shaping of us. Yes, of course part of some inner being in us may be the same throughout life, that is, some core, but as we mature, we adapt many different patterns, change our thoughts and rethink even some of our values. Our faith even evolves a bit over the years often as we become more accepting of what we do not know about God.

Like me you have seen books and magazines with photos of “Then and Now.” Some places even one hundred years later are easily recognized, others completely different and unrecognizable. You and I do not have a book chronicling our life in such photos, but we do have such photos. Often, we find ourselves chuckling at something we once proudly wore, or a hair style quite foreign to today’s styles. What the photos do not reveal are how we have changed more deeply; how we have changed as persons.

Words continue to evolve. The word “prevent” once meant, as its Latin root means, “to come before”, that is, to arrive before another. Now, of course, prevent means to stop.

You and I evolve. Followers of Jesus evolve in their following. This means God is not yet finished with us. We are never finely polished complete followers of Jesus. God is not through with us. This actually is good news for us.

It is easy in a congregation with college students to see young adults as those with so much ahead of them. Some of us as we age don’t always see that even in middle age. It is not about what quantity of time that lies ahead of us. It is instead that simply stated there is time ahead of us. It is God’s time and God will use it as God uses all time to both work with us and work on us. God is not yet finished with us. However large or small, we have following to do, and God has more caring to do.