The canard asserts:
We fear change.
Yet we crave, we seek
novelty and the next thing.
This is the fuel that powers
the engine of pop culture.
So change per se does not
frighten us. It enthralls us.
We like some change.
We have a taste, an appetite
for it. We consume it.
We desire the change
we can control, we can master.
But the change threatening
to master us, to consume us,
to kill us–this we fear.

So let’s rewrite the canard.
We fear uncontrollable change.
We fear unbound change.
We fear unlimited change.
We fear sovereign change.
We fear God.
But fear is the absence of faith.
So our canard becomes our cry.
We fear because we do not believe,
because we do not have trust,
because we fall short in faith.
But we do not live without hope.
The God whom we fear
has faced and faced down
the consuming, killing change,
the ending of life in death.
In raising his Son from death
by the power of their Spirit,
the Father masters the fearsome change
and then shares with us
the faith that casts out our fear.

So let’s rewrite the canard.
We do not fear change.
We do not fear death.
We do not fear God.
We have faith in God.
We trust God.
Or, as the penny reminds us
when we bend down to retrieve it
from the dust on the street,
“In God we trust.”

David M. Frye
April 29, 2009
Denton, Neb.