In our collect for today, we ask God to “bring [us] again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and ever hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ.” That simple petitions carries a number of phrases that would prove fruitful for our reflection: penitent hearts, steadfast faith, the Word of God, for example. But the phrase that catches my attention today is “unchangeable truth”. God’s truth is unchangeable, though our perception of that Divine Truth changes.

From the creating Word in the very beginning onward, God has been revealing the Divine Truth of Love to us. What we humans are able to receive and understand has grown and changed throughout history, as each generation accumulates and massages the knowledge and wisdom of God’s Truth from those who have gone before. The Bible is our record of God’s disclosure of Divine Truth one day at a time, one person at a time, century by century as God has acted in history. In our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures last Sunday, for example, Noah perceived God’s Word coming as salvation from natural disaster. Today, Abraham, who has come to know God as One who calls, finds the Divine Truth in God’s promises of fruitfulness. The psalmist recognizes God’s Truth as Sovereign of the world. In our epistle, Paul sees God’s Truth in the resurrection of Christ Jesus for our justification, the merciful gift of God bringing us into a healed relationship with the Holy One. Jesus, in today’s gospel, recognizes the unchangeable Truth of God in the way of the cross, death and resurrection. Each example develops more fully and deeply the immutability of God’s Truth.

Our creating, redeeming, sustaining God is not finished with us and continues to reach out to us with Divine Truth. What I know of God today is different from what I understood when I was 20 or 40 or even 60. There is always more for us to learn and experience of God’s Unchangeable Truth. The Divine Truth we each need comes as we are open and ready to receive it, gradually, in the situations and circumstances of our lives so that we are not overwhelmed by the magnitude of God’s glory. The season of Lent is the perfect opportunity for us to come to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of the Word of God, Jesus Christ.