I'll fight anyone who says Bob Dylan wasn't a great poet and a prophet of sorts.

. . . .Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'. . . .

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
(Dylan, B The Times they are a Changin' Columbia Records 1964)



Ok so I italicized some important parts of this song. Basically the ones that gesture towards the words of Christ. Why? Because the last five months have been a time of change for me.

Everything has been flip flopped and the "order is rapidly fadin'." And I am at a point where I know that changes have to and are being made, but I struggle with making some of those changes. Not that I don't want to, but that it seems so hard.

I cry out to God to make or help me make changes in my life -- real, deep down heart and soul changes -- and nothing seems to happen. Of course one can say that I am being impatient -- which I am -- but I want nothing more then to serve God and live the life that he intends for me. And though I have good intentions, I fail miserably.

Lessons in humility. That has actually been a motto of mine for this last little while. And it is true. For real change to occur we must have true humility, because we must know that we can't do it on our own. Our prideful flesh says "I can do it, I don't need your help." . . . and then we fall flat on our faces.

What changes do I long for? Simple: I want to live an incarnate life. I want to live in continual engagement with the Spirit of the living God. Catch-22. The change I want is what I need to make that change. Doh. So how does it come about??? Struggle, continual grasping, continual questing and quest-ioning.

But I am impatient. I want the times of my life to be changin' NOW. But as the song goes what is first now "will later" be different.

Can't later be now?????