Staying the Same

Popcorn. I simply cannot tell you how much I love popcorn. It is easily my favorite snack. The pantry must be stocked with microwave popcorn at all times. There’s a funny thing about microwave popcorn, though – the time it takes to pop it. It varies from microwave to microwave, which is not usually a problem…unless you’re in junior high babysitting your cousins one night and you don’t know there is a difference in microwave wattage.

Apparently, my aunt and uncle’s microwave was newer and more powerful than our microwave at home. Popcorn in our microwave took eight minutes. Popcorn in their microwave popped for eight minutes left very excitable results. For one thing, the inside of the entire microwave was black. There was a hole literally eaten into the bag where it had been scorched. The entire contents of said bag were also black, matching the new interior of the microwave. Further, acrid smoke poured out of the microwave and filled the kitchen, so polluting the air that when the aunt and uncle arrived home a couple of hours later, they immediately noticed the stench. We were lucky, I suppose, not to need the intervention of the Fire Department.

What I had failed to heed was the Number One Rule of Popcorn, printed on the back of every single bag of microwave popcorn: Listen to the popcorn and when it slows down in popping, it is done. Microwaves come, microwaves go. The rule remains the same.

As a senior in high school, a Bible teacher pointed out Matthew 5:32, “But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.” He said that people will play What If and put in assorted stories. These stories are an attempt to get around what Jesus said in this verse. His exact words were – and I wrote this in my Bible – “Situations change, but the verse stays the same.”

How true! Things may change, but the Bible always stays the same. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8, NKJV). Are you holding fast to the immovable, immutable word of God?