Coming and Going

Psalm 121:8 says, “The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” I like that verse because I have discovered that life involves a series of comings and goings.

We’re a society on the go. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are more than 255 million registered vehicles on American roads. In a typical year Americans log nearly a billion miles on airplanes. That’s a lot of coming and going.

Worldwide approximately 360,000 babies are born each day (4.45 births per second), and 156,000 people die every day (1.8 deaths per second). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, on a typical day in America 10,800 babies are born and 7,200 people die. That’s a lot of coming and going.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over 50 million students headed off to approximately 98,500 public elementary and secondary schools for the fall term last year, and about 3.8 million people graduate from an American college or university in a typical year. That’s a lot of coming and going.

Look at your workplace and you will see people coming and going. Fresh-faced new employees start their careers while workplace veterans move toward retirement. In business, change happens constantly and reorganizations are par for the course. Look around your neighborhood and you will see people “coming and going.” The moving van takes away one family’s furniture so a new neighbor can fill the same house or apartment. Relationships change. Friends come and go.

Look at your church. Hopefully you see a steady flow of new faces among the flock as the Lord adds those who are being saved. Meanwhile you probably miss some familiar friends who have gone to be with the Lord, moved to another location, or decided to worship with a different congregation. Christ intends for his followers to be in a constant state of coming and going. We come together to be encouraged and equipped, then we go out to spread the gospel, whether on a foreign mission field or a place of service close to home.

Social trends come and go. Today’s hot newsmaker is tomorrow’s has-been. This year’s trend is next year’s trash.

Political leaders come and go—making their mark only for their successor to erase it. Even nations come and go. In the overall flow of history a country like the United States is a fairly recent upstart unheard of 300 years ago. The global stage looks enormous to us, but to the Lord “the nations are like a drop in a bucket” (Isaiah 40:15).

Read the verse again: “The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore” (Psalm 121:8). In a changing world, God himself is the constant. The psalmist declared, “My eyes will be on the faithful in the land” (Psalm 101:6), and no one is more faithful than the Lord.

William Faulkner pointed out the difference between monuments and footprints. “A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’” Our lives are filled with movement and change, but “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). As someone has said, “If Jesus is first, you’ll know what’s next.”