Most of us — if we’re honest — will admit that we resist change, even if we like the idea of it. We may delight in newness, have a penchant for novelty, welcome distraction, or coolly ride out circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we want anything to shift within ourselves on a profound level.

Lent is an apt season for reflecting on the things in our lives that want to move, that cannot or should not remain the same. A gift that needs to grow, priorities desperate to realign, bits of our psyche we’ve worried so much that they’re raw or calloused and need to be left alone to heal.

Tracy Chapman’s song “Change” asks all the right questions — questions we can only safely ask ourselves in the presence of a God of love.

“If everything you think you know
Makes your life unbearable
Would you change?”

“If not for the good why risk falling?”

“If you’d broken every rule and vow
And hard times come to bring you down
Would you change?”

“Are you so upright you can’t be bent
If it comes to blows?”

“If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings a pain that can’t be soothed
Would you change?”