Change and Decay

It seems that concern has increased in recent years about care for the environment, the erosion of the ozone layer, global warming, the search for alternatives to fossil fuel, and so on.  We have a Green Party MP; there will soon be legislation to charge for plastic carrier bags; our local councils are competing for the best recycling ratios for domestic waste – the list is endless. Gradually we have come to see that these matters are important, and we feel part of a worldwide anxiety, a fear that our God-given earth may be wearing out.

But let me throw an element of attrition into the debate – some grit into the oyster, if you will.  Consider for a moment the ageing process as it relates to human life.  A seventy-five- or eighty-year-old cannot fulfil the same physical ambitions of a youth just out of high school; it would be unreasonable for him to expect to do so.  By that time of life, many people are considering the implications of downsizing, and perhaps even moving to sheltered accommodation.  Compared to the comfortable 3- or 4-bedroomed house, the family home of his middle age, a small flat will naturally accommodate fewer personal possessions.  Something will have to go: usually quite a lot gets pruned!  However reluctantly, we regard this as an inevitable progression of lifestyles.

Lets return to the thorny question of global decay.   What has prompted the concern that is being expressed today?  Some, certainly, is founded in a worthy desire to preserve threatened species, and specific constructions or ways of life that face extinction or obliteration.  But isn’t the primary cause simply fear of such a phenomenal degree of change?  The effects that might be brought about by even a small rise in global sea levels represent change of such a magnitude that is virtually incomprehensible.  How can mankind survive in the face of it? 

Almost a century ago, in the midst of war, the outlook of many embroiled in the fighting must have seemed very bleak.  Yet, enormous though the casualties were, far more survived than were killed. 

Faced with the statistics presented to us in the media, we fear the sheer uncertainty of life itself under such different circumstances.  But, doesn’t our pensioner feel something of the same foreboding about that small flat?  And yet, for the majority at least, a reasonable quality of life continues after the removal has taken place; their basic needs are met, albeit in a different way from before.  Cannot we trust God to provide for our absolute necessities, whatever the nature of our surroundings?  

In 1847 Henry Francis Lyte wrote a hymn that is possibly one of the best-known; a hymn that is still sung annually at the FA Cup Final.  Perhaps he expressed a deeper truth than we normally realise when, in his final illness, he penned the words, “Change and decay in all around I see: O thou who changest not, abide with me.”