Change and my favorite restaurant

Yesterday I was crushed to find out that my favorite restaurant for more than a decade has changed hands: new owner, new wait staff, new sushi chef.  We had dinner anyway and it was OK, but …. It just wasn’t the same.

I had a long day yesterday – lots of new stuff to integrate into existing systems, new tasks to do, new ways and processes.  Things can change rapidly.  I left our meeting and drove multiple miles through territory that I know well, but it’s been a while since I’ve been here. So many changes in the landscape.  Trees cut down, roads widened, new buildings put up in place of older ones.  I was looking forward to something that didn’t change –  my favorite restaurant and my old familiar standbys: salad with ginger dressing, miso soup, spicy fried rice and a sushi roll.  But it was not to be.  The ginger dressing was spicy not sweet, the spicy fried rice was just not spicy enough.  My yellow-tail tuna roll wasn’t constructed properly and fell apart in my soy sauce.

I really was upset. Kind of the “final straw” feeling. As we drove home through the pollen tinged rain last night, I asked myself if there was anything in life that felt like it didn’t change – that felt like security, that felt absolute.  And truthfully, in this world, the byword is “the only thing that doesn’t change is that things change.”

And so this morning I woke up with tremendous empathy for those who are fans of traditional, conservative worship.  I understand why at a funeral you insisted on the 23^rd Psalm in King James Version.  I really understand why you wanted the traditional Lord’s prayer instead of our contemporary one in the hymnal.  You wanted not just the message to change, you wanted the medium to remain the same as well.  I feel the same at times.  I like some of the older liturgy as well – I occasionally want to say that, “We be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.”  And then I finish the statement,  “But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.”

You are indeed the same Lord and your byword is grace and mercy.  Praise be!