Ch....ch....Changing....

My son, Britt, is a college junior studying broadcasting. He works at a radio station in his college town. Whenever we’re near his town and we know he’s working, we tune in, anxiously awaiting the station breaks to hear his voice. We are always amazed. “Is that silver-tongued, smooth, grown-up radio voice really my son reading the news and weather reports and giving the station info?” It always gives us a thrill.

This semester he hosts his own radio show that streams live from the college radio station. If you want to catch “Sit tight with Britt” tune in Wednesday nights at 6 and 9 pm to www.kfhs.net as he plays music and draws upon his unbelievable memory for music trivia. It’s a fun show and we try to listen every week. Mostly just to hear his voice because his music is not our music. But we listen and learn, proud of his knowledge and expertise.

Last night he called to tell us to be sure and tune in for his oldies show–music from the 1970′s. We were excited! Finally! Great music and getting to hear Britt on the show! We settled in with snacks to listen and walk down memory lane with him.

We did. Bob Dylan, The Doors, Credence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd–all bands that I listened to on the top 40 at KOMA, Oklahoma City.

KOMA blasted rock music across the nation in the 1970′s and teens everywhere tuned in. It was the only station that came in to my middle-of-the-wheat-fields Kansas small town that wasn’t country music. After Kary and I met, it was a small thing we had in common. We grew up about 250 miles apart, but both of us had radios we turned just right at night to listen to KOMA as we drifted off to sleep dreaming of the far away places described in the lyrics.

Music takes us back, doesn’t it? Last week at the hospital, the Sirius radio station was playing “Oldies” and the nurses and I laughed that it was like being back in high school, the music a backdrop to our lives.

Even though I knew all the groups, last night Britt played some songs I didn’t remember. He is a student of the music. He listens to the whole album, not just whatever makes the top 40. I listened and learned.

Some of the music he played, I liked and some of it, I didn’t. But I remembered it interwoven into my life as a teenager.

Hard as it is to believe, the 1970′s were 40 years ago. It was a different era than today. Turbulent. And we knew the world was changing.

I, also, was a different person; a teenager trying to find my way in a world turned upside down by the protests and changes of the Vietnam War era. Even though my small town didn’t seem to change on the surface, the changes from the 1960′s rumbled through shaking the foundation of all we knew.

Divorce became more common. Clean cut kids went to college and came home with long hair. In a school where the question, do you smoke, meant cigarettes, we learned it meant something different on college campuses. Most of us threw off the conventions of small town morality and embraced what we were told would set us free–love, sex, and rock and roll.

Last night, Britt played Changes by David Bowie and I was struck by how I’d changed.

When I left home, I was sure my parents knew little about the “real world.” I was pro-choice and anti-war. I was woman, hear me roar. I was all bell bottoms and platform shoes and frizzy hair. I could have it all in what had been a man’s world. I believed in God, but “the Bible was written so long ago, God obviously didn’t realize how the world would change from ‘back then.’” Those Bible stories were for then. I was living NOW!

Hoo boy! Really a miracle that a lightening bolt did come down from heaven to change my arrogant mind!

Let’s just say I have a better idea today of Who God is.

I now serve a God that knit me together in my mother’s womb. Before I was even born, He knew and had numbered my days and written them in His book. He is a God who looks at me and knows that I am fearfully and wonderfully made because He is God of heaven and God of earth and He designed me to be perfectly me. Psalm 139  

Because He made each one of us and also made the world in which we live, because with Him there is no shifting shadow, because He is the same yesterday, today and forever, He knows the world in which we live today. The laws He put into place when He spoke the world into being hold true today because He is a good God who knows what we need to prosper and what will harm us.  Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17, John 1:1, Jeremiah 29:11

David Bowie sang, ”Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.”

I am glad that today I can look back on a turbulent time knowing the peace that passes understanding. I am grateful that yes, time has changed me, but I know a God who does trace time. With Paul I can say, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of Heaven and Earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands as if He needed anything because He himself gives men life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:24-28 

Yes, a lot has changed since the 1970′s. My bell bottoms don’t fit like they once did. (Actually, they don’t fit at all!) I live a small town Kansas life that I once ran from. Yes, many things have changed but I am most grateful for the change in how I see God. I am grateful He never changed, so when I came running into the loving arms of the Father, He was still there.

That’s a change for eternity.