10/11/2009

"For the times they are changing" sang Bob Dylan -- and his words could be sung every day! Day after day, maybe especially as we grow older, we recognise the changing of the times.
Today, in 1960, Penguin books put D. H. Lawrence’s book "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" on sale for the first time in Britain- it sold 200,000 copies. It had been published in Italy in 1928 but it was only after a well publicised trial, that has now entered the annals of courtroom drama, that the order banning the book in Britain was overturned. Many people would agree that the publication of "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" marked a sea change in public attitudes to sex in the United Kingdom. And, whether you approved of that, or not, the change still came. And, if we cannot halt change around us, we find we have to learn to cope with it and to renegotiate ourselves within it. So, we often find ourselves reaching out a hand to grasp hold of something firm and secure, something which will always be, something which we can lean on. For the apostle Paul that untouchable security came from the love of God:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.