Genesis chapter 1
Today we are walking in: Maximizing Critical Change
Today we look to the word- CHANGE- H2015- haphak- a primitive root; to turn about or over; by implication, to change, overturn, return, pervert:—become, change, come, be converted, give, make (a bed), overthrow overturn), perverse, retire, tumble, turn (again, aside, back, to the contrary, every way).
The Torah Testifies…………….
Genesis 35:2
Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that werewith him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change H2015 your garments:
Leviticus 27:10
He shall not alter it, nor change H2015 it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change H2015 beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy.
Leviticus 27:33
He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change H2015 it: and if he change H2015 it at all, then both it and the change H2015 thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.
The Prophets Proclaim………
Jeremiah 2:36
Why gaddest thou about so much to change H2015 thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
Zechariah 3:4
And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change H2015 of raiment.
Malachi 3:6
For I am the LORD, I change H2015 not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
The Writings witness……………
Job 14:14
If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change H2015 come.
Psalm 102:26
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change H2015 them, and they shall be changed:
Proverbs 24:21
My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change H2015:
Maximizing Critical Change
Growth, Creativity, and Innovation
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable,
unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
—M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Travelled
We experience many types of change—some we consider positive, others we perceive as negative; some we regard as minor, others we think of as more significant. Yet there are times when substantial change especially alters our lives or the cultural status quo. This is critical change. The term critical change refers to any of the following:
a traumatic life event, such as a serious illness or the death of a loved one
a turning point that completely changes one’s way of life, such as a major relocation or the need to retrain for a new career
a radical shift in personal or professional status, such as a divorce or a firing
a dire situation that needs to be addressed, such as the effects of a natural disaster or an economic crisis
an acute challenge to the status quo, such as the survival of an industry or a people
a crossroads or “zero hour” when a decision or change must be made immediately in response to a problem
Almost all the above are considered negative changes. The others reflect times of transition that involve extra stress and demands. Critical change includes both a disruption and a reordering of people’s lives. It impels them to deal with new relationships, issues, environments, and circumstances.
Critical Change and Positive Growth
As much as we often wish it weren’t, critical change is a part of life. Yet it has a beneficial side, even in the midst of situations in which we experience personal loss. Times of critical change can produce surges of personal growth, creativity, and innovation. If you are experiencing critical challenges—financially, relationally, physically, emotionally —this might become the most fruitful and creative period of your life so far or lead to such a period. While we need to allow ourselves time to grieve our losses, we should also beware of dwelling on those losses rather than discovering how to grow from them.
Periods of personal, community, or national challenge can be times when we undergo the greatest development of maturity, compassion for others, social advancement, and economic development—if we allow the critical change to stretch us and to exercise our innovative qualities. Let your personal motto in such times be innovation. Learn to use every situation to maximize your growth and creativity, to cause you to think beyond the norm, so that you can progress in significant ways.
Change: The Greatest Motivator for Progress and Advancement
It is has been said that people initiate personal change only when the pain of remaining the same exceeds the pain of change. To benefit from critical change, we must recognize that it can be the greatest motivator for progress and advancement. Personal, community, financial, and national histories reflect the fact that innovation is often produced by critical change. Critical change is the incubator of improvement.
On an individual level, how many times has a health crisis motivated a person to improve the quality of his or her life? For example, suppose you smoked cigarettes for thirty years, and now you have emphysema. You initiated this critical change in your life, but now it has overwhelmed you, and you have to deal with it. You must stop a lifelong habit. At the same time, you have to learn alternative responses to handling life in order to survive.
On a global level, every great enterprise throughout history was a product of some change in the environment. When the church was stagnant and controlled by tradition, a monk named Martin Luther read the Scriptures and grew uncomfortable with the difference between what he read and what the church was practicing. He helped to initiate the Reformation, a significant departure from the religious tradition of the day, which resulted in the birth of Protestantism.
It is comfort that creates tradition. It is discomfort that creates transformation.
Let’s look at some examples of progress sparked by change in the development of the United States. The creation of the railroad system led to the establishment of towns and cities along the rail routes. Later, as the population of the country grew, so did the incentive to mobilize people. The invention of the car and the construction of a more extensive roadway system followed. The Wright brothers and others developed aviation to further advance the ease of transportation.
Likewise, the development of easier and faster methods of communication were motivated, in part, by the vastness of the United States, which, by 1850, spread from New York to California. How were the East and West coasts— and everywhere in between—to maintain contact in order to keep people connected and to transact business? The expansion of the country led to inventions created under the pressure of necessity or sparked by an opening of opportunity for innovative minds. When mail was transferred by men on horseback, via the Pony Express, it could take weeks, months, or perhaps more than a year for a letter to get from one place to another. The railroads sped up that process. Also, the telegraph allowed communication to occur in seconds, and the telephone provided instant person-to-person communication. The development of the Internet led to e-mail, which is sent in milliseconds.
Progress or development is always motivated by change. What caused John F. Kennedy to announce to Americans in the early 1960s that the country’s space program would develop the technology to send astronauts to the moon within a decade? Kennedy’s motivation was the pressure of perceived critical change. It was rumored that the Russians were well on their way to attempting such a trip. And he felt that in order to maintain its position in the world, the United States had to be the first country to do so. The Soviet Union’s change of technology forced a response in the United States through which NASA’s scientists stretched their creative and technical abilities and sent astronauts to the moon in 1969.
Think about the creation of the nuclear bomb during World War II. The Allies and the Axis powers were engaged in a monumental struggle, and both sides sought to invent a weapon that would give them an advantage over their opponents. The critical change of war has often led to the development of more powerful, precise, and deadly weapons.
More recently, scanners in airports had to be developed due to a critical change in the global environment of safety with an increase in hijackings and terrorist acts. That change is still forcing the invention of new technologies. One change produces another change, which is affected by still another change.
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, there was little serious discussion about alternative fuels by officials in government, executives in the corporate world, and the general population. Why? Because, after the gas crisis of the mid-1970s, we got comfortable. There was an adequate supply of gas and oil, prices remained relatively low, and people thought, Why do we need anything else? Almost the entire Western world was lulled into a sense of security by the comfort of tradition.
Then, a number of factors converged to bring the issue to the public consciousness, including—but not limited to— tensions between the United States and countries in the Middle East and South America that produce large supplies of oil, the 9-11 attack, the Iraq war, and an increased interest in environmentalism. When gas prices topped four and five dollars late in the first decade of the twenty-first century, interest in alternative fuel sparked. While traditional forms of fuel are still dominant, we are seeing a shift in the general mind-set of people that will continue into the future. Hybrid cars are becoming increasingly popular, with more models offered by car companies each year.
Now, cars that used to be the norm are called “traditional cars.” A traditional car is a vehicle that had been accepted as permanent—not in terms of external style but in terms of the type of fuel it ran on and how that fuel was converted into horsepower. But social and political changes are encouraging the development of alternative sources of energy to support all the machinery of life—fueling cars, heating houses, and so forth. People may initially be worried or angry about the advent of innovations, but they and their descendants often reap the benefits of them.
Flying toward the Storm
Somehow, human beings don’t seem to grow and innovate as much in good times as in critical times. Again, the average person doesn’t know what he is capable of until change affects him or her. I have great confidence in the inner resources of human beings. I believe they are much more powerful than the circumstances confronting the countries and cultures in which they live. In general, the human spirit thrives on finding solutions to chaotic conditions. People often seem to emerge greater, stronger, wiser, and more innovative after going through critical change. We must never despise the power of change to create a better future.
Eagles are the greatest “flying machines” in the world, but we all know that young birds, including eaglets, have to be forced to fly at first. When the mother eagle recognizes that her offspring are too comfortable living amid warm feathers in a snug nest, she begins to rip up the soft, top layers with which the nest is lined: she pulls up the cotton, cloth, and straw to expose the hidden thorns underneath. She instinctively knows that the only way the eaglets will fly is when they are too uncomfortable to remain where they are. They literally need to ascend to a new altitude. As Moses wrote, “[Yah] guarded [His people] as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions” (Deuteronomy 32:10–11).
Another amazing thing about eagles is that they are the only birds that fly toward storms. Every other bird is afraid of storms. Yet eagles spread their wings and use the abnormal wind currents formed by storms in order to soar —giving them an opportunity to rest. They naturally know how to benefit from critical change in their environment.
Do you always run from storms? Or, do you face them, learning how their currents can lift you to higher altitudes and even enable you to rest in the midst of them?
The Benefits of Change
Let’s look at several interrelated benefits of change, which we will return to in various ways throughout this book.
1. Change draws out potential. Potential is hidden, untapped power, or dormant ability. Normally, ability remains dormant within a person unless he or she is highly motivated internally. People rarely decide on their own to release their true potential. The average person is not motivated enough to take the initiative to tap into his or her unused resources and capabilities but is satisfied with the status quo. Then, change comes and draws out his or her hidden potential. This is why change can be a real benefit to us. Change is vital because it is often the ignition that draws the power from the human battery.
2. Change challenges potential. You may feel you have achieved something significant or accomplished something noteworthy—until a change takes place in your life or in your environment that challenges you to go beyond what you previously had been satisfied with. We can become so enamored with what we have already completed that we cease to pursue what we can still accomplish. Change has a way of making us move beyond what used to impress us about ourselves. It shortens our self-congratulatory celebrations and spurs us on to do something greater.
3. Change pressures potential. Again, you never know the great things you can accomplish until you have to do them. Releasing one’s potential usually requires the element of responsibility. Another way of saying this is that ability requires responsibility in order to be manifested. A change in conditions often forces us to accept duties and obligations that make us dig deeper into the reserves in our capacity.
4. Change manifests the person behind the potential. Metaphorically speaking, you don’t know what you’re carrying inside you until you have to deliver it. When an unexpected event or situation occurs, it can prompt you to manifest a self that people didn’t know was in you—that you never knew was in you. Unexpected change can help to manifest who you really are. Moreover, we will see that planned change has the same result. When you challenge yourself to implement change in your life toward a better future, you reveal the true self within you.
Therefore, should we curse the chaos in our lives that we don’t understand? Or should we seek to understand it so that we may benefit from it?
Success in moving past critical change is determined by one’s ability to benefit from it. Develop your capacity to oversee and profit from critical changes in your life and environment. Become an innovator!
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
—Ivy Baker Priest, United States Treasurer, 1953–1961J
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