What’s your change quotient (cq)?

Are you change-averse? Or change-seeking? Do you live by routines? Or do you live to try the latest new gadget? Or cereal? Or iPhone app? How about the CQs of the people you live with? Do they fall into a compatible range?

Households that spread across the CQ spectrum only survive with a good sense of humor. Once upon a morning, my late husband suggest­ed pancakes for breakfast, instead of our usual yogurt, and I sud­denly found myself white-knuckling the breakfast table: “Pancakes?!? Now!?!” He calmly replied: “Well, we could wait until dinner.” We both had to laugh.

The two of us covered both extremes on the CQ spectrum. A lover of pattern and paisley, I held down the “Change? No way!” end. In contrast, he hovered nearer the opposite end: “Change for the Sake of Change.” He was ready to reach for the latest recipe, vintage, or style as elixirs against dull predictability. Yet, when sudden illness shattered the sunny pattern of our lives, we couldn’t choose change. Change chose us. We could only choose whether change would renew or destroy us. Sometimes even that choice was beyond us.

How could we dare hope that change led to renewal and not destruction? Simultaneously simple and mysterious, the answer lies in God’s own change, “emptying him­self” to become one of us (Philippi­ans 2:7). Jesus seals God’s promise that change leads to renewal—not destruction. Incarnation is God’s change; resurrection, God’s renewal.

The journey of discipleship unpacks those convictions, for Christian discipleship is following Jesus, God’s promise in the flesh. The truth of God’s promise can’t be argued; it can only be lived. Here are some things to look for along the way.

Whether you choose change—or change chooses you—it’s helpful to know where you’re starting from. Knowing your tolerance for change helps. On one hand, the change-averse find it hard to change habits, even bad ones. There’s the story of a man long imprisoned in the Tower of London and suddenly pardoned by a new monarch. The door to his cell opened, but the man regarded the threshold uncertainly: “I know what this side is like, but what lies beyond I know not.” Change was too threatening, and he chose to stay with the familiar, even if it imprisoned him.

At other times, the familiar liberates, issuing an invitation to live life close to the bone. Living deep into the familiar can move us beyond merely looking. When I visit her, I watch my mother watching birds. Crippled by arthritis, she spends her days moving from chair to chair, and one of them turns toward the window. She studies the birds, distinguishing different species, and even knows the mourning dove that lost its partner. As I watch her watching, I realize that she’s cap­tured that combination of awe and attention that constitute regard.

Isn’t this what the pregnant Mary discovers, when she suddenly catches a glimpse of herself from a God’s-eye-view? She marvels that God even notices her: “For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaid...” (Luke 1:48, KJV). And this pregnant woman’s song only echoes another. When Hagar real­izes she has seen the face of the God of Israel—and lived, she responds with wonder: “Have I really seen God and remained alive after see­ing him?” (Genesis 16:13, NRSV) Change-averse by circumstance, these women, like the elderly, are living lessons in the divine art of attention. Through them, we learn how God regards us.

On the other hand, change-seekers break out of habits more easily, sometimes good ones. “She had everything going for her! How could she do this?” one friend con­fided about another who’d fallen in love, left her marriage, and moved to the other side of the country. She left us stunned; yet, we knew her restlessness. We missed that mad­cap energy, even as we prayed she would find a place to rest, somehow, somewhere, and with someone. Did she even have the capacity to choose what would give her the solace she sought? From across the centu­ries, Augustine’s observation struck home: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions 1.1).

In the Bible study story this month, we can almost hear Nathan shouting at David: “You have every­thing going for you! How could you do this?!” David’s restless search for new options, even and especially under pressure, made him a bril­liant military commander and a shrewd monarch, but threatened to unmoor him. Long thought to be David’s own, the words of Psalm 51 repent of a restless heart: “Create in me a clean heart, O God…” Put simply, David begs God: “Don’t leave it up to me.”

Choosing—and being chosen

David the king, the woman who left everything behind: They had the power to choose change. Lots of people don’t. Both Hagar and Mary find themselves in pregnancies they might not want, impregnated by someone they did not choose. Their consent comes after the fact. People like David and our friend have the power to create facts.

Tony Kushner’s brilliant musi­cal, Caroline, or Change, probes the limits of the power to change and be changed. Set in a Jewish household in Louisiana in the 1960s, the plot plays on the meaning of the word change. Initially, change refers to the spare coins 8-year-old Noah Gell­man leaves in his pockets for the family’s black maid to find. Hoping to alter this behavior, Noah’s new stepmother decrees that anything found in Noah’s pants belongs to their maid.

Then Noah starts deliberately leaving money in his pockets. Part­ly, he considers Caroline his friend because she comforted him as his mother died of cancer. Partly he fantasizes himself a hero in Caro­line’s life. Then a $20 bill surfaces in the laundry. An argument ensues, and their relationship dissolves. Caroline bitterly concludes that they “weren’t never friends” to begin with. Certainly, Noah exer­cises a power to make or break relationships that she, a maid, does not have.

But change also refers to the tec­tonic cultural shifts beyond every character’s control. None of the characters can change the assas­sinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy, the Civil Rights movement, or the war in Vietnam. Moreover, all of them live on the periphery of the dominant culture: Caroline, because she is black, a single mother, and a maid; the Gellmans, because they are Jewish and her employers. Finally, change refers to forces beyond everyone’s control, powers looming over all of them. At the end of the play, Caro­line concludes she and Noah could never be friends, but simply people “who learn how to lose things.”

The message underneath the musical, though, is less bleak. This “story behind the story” is Kush­ner’s own. He grew up in the South in the 60s. If Caroline, or Change is autobiographical in the least, it demonstrates that even in unavoid­able circumstances, where all the choices seem stolen, there is a place to pivot from.

A basketball player looks like she is surrounded by guards, no teammate to turn to, no pass to make. Then from nowhere, a straight shot to the basket appears, she pivots—and shoots. This play may be Kushner’s straight shot, wherein he claims the only power he has: the power to tell the story. He offers one that telegraphs the real world without sentiment or excuses, but with compassion and generosity. Loss births his story.

Loss is a necessary ingredient in change. After my husband died, I would have eaten pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, had he only been there to make them. But the empty space at the table screamed his absence. Instead of eating, I started walking, making my way to the village every morn­ing before the light came up. At first, I invented destinations: bank­ing, shopping, coffee. Finally, it hit me: “You don’t need a reason: just keep walking.” And so I did, leaning into the loveliness of early morning. In time, the habit took me along other paths of incomparable beauty. Who would have guessed gift could come from such absence?

In The Holy Longing, author Ronald Rolheiser writes of “let­ting your loss bless you.” Blessing doesn’t come easily or quickly. It took those 40 days between Easter and the Ascension for the disciples to get used to the absence of Jesus and the presence of the risen Christ. But they had that time to get used to life in the Resurrection Zone.

Change shatters the familiar. Every change leaves behind break­age, and it takes time to pick up the pieces, regard each one, and wait until each piece finds its way into a new pattern. Even today, in a new position in a new part of the country, the ache of loss both accompa­nies me and blesses me.

The stories of David and Hagar confirm that loss leads to renewal. Sarah’s insecurities govern Hagar’s life, but at least as a house servant, she can count on shelter and food. Freedom from bondage means fend­ing for herself and her son with only the promise of an angel for sup­port. In the end, the promise of an angel comes true: Her son becomes the father of a vast and powerful nomadic tribe. King David repents elaborately when he understands his offense against God; yet, the first child of his union with Bath­sheba falls ill and dies. Out of that grief he builds a new relationship with his wife and his God; Solomon is their blessing. Finally, loss blesses, leading to renewal.

Once opened to this mystery, we find it everywhere. The whole cre­ation tells a story of breaking and remaking. Light breaks away from darkness—night from day, sun from moon and all stars, earth from sky and sea. Eve breaks out of Adam’s rib cage. Not surprisingly, breaking and remaking is at the heart of God’s new creation. The apostle Thomas sniffed out this mystery. Because he demanded tangible proof, we know there were wounds on the body of the risen Christ. We can believe that loss leads to renewal—and not destruc­tion. We participate in that mystery whenever we receive the “Body of Christ, broken for you.” Out of such brokenness, we receive new life.

Change lies at the heart of Christianity, not just any change but change for renewal. The voice from the throne utters the beauti­ful and terrible truth: “See, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5 Isaiah 65:17, 66:22). To the change-averse, these words prom­ise that change will happen. It can neither be denied nor buried. To the change-seeking, they warn that we can’t dictate the terms: I not you make all things new.

God’s change offers all of us the consolation we crave, for God’s change leads to renewal and not destruction. God seals that promise by becoming one of us to point us unswervingly toward renewal. Incarnation is God’s change, and resurrection is God’s renewal. Let us go out with good courage.

Martha E. Stortz is the Berhard M. Chris­tensen professor of religion and vocation at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minn., and author of Lutheran Woman Today’s 2007-08 Bible study, Blessed to Follow: the Beati­tudes as a Compass for Discipleship.