Coco Calling No.251 - All About Change

Parrots and humans share a common trait, because not many of us like to welcome change into our lives. We prefer everything to remain the same because then we feel a whole lot more secure. We know where we are, and we don’t have to adapt or let go of what we’re used to.

Yes, ‘change’ is often viewed as being something bad. And sometimes, it can be just that. For example, none of us want to experience a bereavement, or a conflict, or famine or an illness. And if you’re a parrot, then you can’t bear the thought of humans coming along and cutting down your rainforest to make way for agricultural land. And you know, I came into this world inside the warmth and comfort of my very own egg. I could have very happily stayed there, but this thing called ‘change’ came along so that I had to hatch out and face up to the ‘real world’ outside….

But just as change can be a bad thing, it can also be something very positive. Because it offers us all the chance to improve ourselves, or to help others around us to live a better life. That was certainly true for my owner’s wife. Last Summer, she was diagnosed as having a large brain tumour, and she needed the help of a highly skilled surgeon to change her brain back to how it had been beforehand. Yes, he successfully removed the tumour, giving her a brand-new lease of life, as the ‘before’ and ‘after’ scans above show. Inertia in her case, would have been a very bad thing.

And you know, God and Jesus go about their business, rather like that brain surgeon. Because it is only God and Jesus who can ultimately deliver us from the threats and menace that we face here on Earth. But at the heart of that deliverance is the question of change. You see, we have to be open to change in the first place to discover God and Jesus in our lives. And then we have to be prepared for the ultimate change of leaving everything we know in this life to allow us to enter into Heaven.

So, maybe it’s just as well that I hatched out from my egg, because in the long term, change can be a very good thing for us all………

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but

on building the new.”

(Socrates: [c.470BC – 399BC]: Renowned Greek philosopher).

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”                                                                       

(C.S. Lewis: [1898 – 1963]: Northern Irish scholar, author and Anglican lay theologian)

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.”                                                                                                    (Gail Sheehy: [1936 – 2020]: American author, journalist and lecturer).

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.

(2 Corinthians 5:17)