Enhancements

Tomorrow I’m doing pulpit supply, preaching at a local church while the regular pastor is on vacation.  So preparing the sermon has been the dominant task on my mind, pretty much all week.  No time to spend blogging when I need to attend to the preparation of a message from God’s word.  Now, on Saturday evening, the sermon is ready, or at least as ready as I should let it be.  I could continue to edit, tweak, etc. it more, and more, but I’m not going to.

We are spending the evening at home, caring for the young son of some friends while his mom and dad have some time together.  It is a beautiful summer evening in Minnesota.  After dinner we sat outside while the kids played, and one of the things they did was play with bubbles.  They had the little bottles of soap with the wands they held by their lips as the blew on them, spreading bubbles over the lawn.   And they had a large wand, nearly a foot across, that they lifted from a trough filled with bubble soap and slowly waved through the air.  They giggled, laughed and chased after large, really large, bubbles rising into the air.

I took a look at the soap my wife had used for the bubbles.  Given that our daughter, her friends and our grandchildren go through a lot of bubble soap in a summer she buys a large bottle to use to refill the smaller bottles.  It turns out that she doesn’t use any ordinary soap, but “miracle bubbles.”  And while “miracle bubbles” sound pretty good to me, as they say on TV, “That’s not all!”  They are “super miracle bubbles.”  And even that isn’t enough.  They are “premium plus super miracle bubbles.”

Now it seems to me that “premium plus super miracle bubbles” would have to be the best soap bubbles ever.  But it turns out that it isn’t.  My wife adds something to enhance the bubble soap.  It must work, because the pictures she takes of the bubbles the kids make and chase with such exuberance are really spectacular.   Not the bubbles I recall from my youth.

“Change is good,” so the saying goes.  This is certainly true sometimes, as in the case of the development of bubble soap.  As we move through stages of life we can also experience change that is good.  We can also see changes that are not good, such as making a series of choices in our lives that only lead to hardship and brokenness. 

The scripture that comes to mind as I watch children blow bubbles and ponder this is Hebrews 13:8, which says:

                Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

In a changing world, one that changes in ways we often cannot control, our Lord and Savior remains unchanged.  He has existed before the creation of the world and he will faithfully carry his children with him into eternity.  His love, expressed perfectly on the cross, will endure forever.

Christ is enough.  No enhancements needed.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.