O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
Henry Francis Lyte, “Abide with Me,” Hymns, 166
We are surrounded by change. Organizations restructure, children grow up, people move, and numerous other developments require us to adjust and to evolve. Change is good; it keeps live interesting. It can also be exhausting, and at times, heart-wrenching. How grateful we are to have a Father in Heaven who is unchanging and eternal!
James offered this reassurance in his general epistle:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
James 1:17
We can be grateful for the good gifts we have already received from God, and we can have confidence that He will continue to provide these gifts.
Moroni used similar words to assure us that God continues to perform miracles in the world:
Do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?
And now, if ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who doth vary, and in whom there is shadow of changing, then have ye imagined up unto yourselves a god who is not a God of miracles.
Mormon 9:9-10
The powerful truth is that because God is unchanging, we know what He will do in the future based on what He has done in the past. In the words of Howard W. Hunter, “He will bless us as a people because he always has blessed us as a people. He will bless us as individuals because he always has blessed us as individuals” (“Hope: An Anchor to the Souls of Men,” Brigham Young University Devotional Address, 7 February 1993). And as President Russell M. Nelson assured us, “[Jesus Christ] works miracles today, and He will work miracles tomorrow” (“Christ Is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains,” General Conference, April 2021).
Today, I will trust in an unchanging God, who has supported me and will continue to support me through every challenge I face. I will will remember that there is no “variableness” in Him. What He has done in the past, He continues to do today. What He is doing today, He will continue to do in the future.
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