Standing safely behind the backstop of the coliseum-like "Pony League Field," I imagined in fine detail what 5 ounces of tanned and stitched leather, wool windings and a cushioned cork core could do to my 12-year-old body.

Ever been hit by a pitched baseball travelling approximately 75 m.p.h. and thrown from a distance of 54 feet? A batter's body has many wonderful areas that tend to stop the forward momentum of a baseball, all with their own particular stinging sensations and lingering aftereffects.

Watching pitch after sizzling pitch, I contemplated my pending graduation from the safe and secure "Bronco League" to the bigger batter's box of Pony League.

Beloved Bronco League. Where the pitching arm of a pre-adolescent could only generate so much wild, kinetic energy. Dreaded Pony League. Where a neophyte stood spitless over a gleaming, white home plate, staring at a tall, hormonally unbalanced pitcher preparing to fire a rock-hard lump of cowhide by his smooth chin.

I knew exactly what it would feel like. Mistakes happen. Pitched baseballs "wander." So I resigned from the Police Athletic League, never to return.

Who among us does not resist change? We seek the status quo, and expect the morning paper to land on the same corner of the stoop day after day. No curveballs or sliders, please. To the Pitcher of Life we say, "Put it right there," as we indicate with an outstretched hand our own personal sweet spot.

America stands today in the batter's box, not knowing who will be pitching tomorrow. And it makes us nervous. The fear of not a few is the specter of a looming gentleman ascending the pitcher's mound, turning away from us as he chalks his hand, the unsettling alphanumeric "2K" in big, black letters on the back of his uniform. 2K. 2000. Millennium. Four-digit roll-over.

Turn of the century.

Maybe it will just go away, we think. But in our gut we know there is no going back. For even if Dick Clark's perennial gig is still a few months away, our world has already changed. "The truth is not that civilization will come to an end," a writer in Newsweek penned earlier this year, "rather that civilization as we once knew it has ended already. . . . The technological environment we live within is something to be manipulated and influenced, but never again something to control."¹

So we spin our little catechisms of comfort, telling each other all will be well, while simultaneously trying to ignore the network anchor reading from his TelePrompTer those too-familiar words: "Just outside of [insert an American suburban haven], another high-school shooting rampage." We try to forget as well that we live in a world in which a 13-year-old Bosnian girl can write to her diary:

"Dear Mimmy, Our windows are broken. All of them except the ones in my room. That is the result of the revolting shell that fell again on Zoka's Jewelry Shop across the way from us. I was alone in the house at the time. Mommy and Daddy were down in the yard, getting lunch ready, and I had gone upstairs to set the table."²

We shiver and shake, but no amount of chicken soup calms our taut and tense souls. So instead, not knowing how to handle the dark millennial wave swelling and cresting and rolling our way, we throw a party. Laugh enough and loudly, we theorize, and perhaps the naysayer's requiem will be drowned out. Thus, you might still book airfare to the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, only 100 miles from the dateline. Claiming (arguably) to be the first country to enter the millennium, they've built an international dateline hotel for timely tourists to welcome that telling sunrise.

Even if all those portentous zeros don't make us fretful, we still work for companies trigger-happy to downsize, we invest our money hoping distant market dividends will pay our post-retirement mortgages, and we wonder just what our children are doing while surfing the Web. We go to bed at night, trying not to think about the implications. "Ready or not," we shout next morning, "Here I come!"

What then? The world we open our eyes to could tomorrow offer a half-hundred topographies. If the world today offers wireless palm computers that allow us to activate our lawn sprinklers, while "smart" bombs seem to develop Attention Deficit Disorder, who's in control? Is there a rhyming scheme in all of this? Is there a calculus? Yes, there is.

"He has not left us to our own devices," writes Jerry Bridges in Trusting God, "or the whims of nature, or the malevolent acts of other people. No! He constantly sustains, provides for and cares for us every moment of every day."³ Could this be true? Is it possible that amidst a world changing moment by moment, a world in which we are afraid of our past, afraid of our future, and the present won't stay still—could there be a flat-sea calm, an eye in this storm? Namely, a God who cares for us? And just how safe is this God?

"While it is certainly true that God's love for us does not protect us from pain and sorrow," Bridges continues, "it is also true that all occasions of pain and sorrow are under the absolute control of God."⁴

Now, there is a golden caveat hidden in Bridges' words that I would be unscrupulous if I did not reveal. In the New Testament, Jesus offers a striking allegory of His Father's attention to what we must call family matters. "Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. . . . Therefore," Jesus concludes, "do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows."⁵ Yes, God's love for His children is profound. He is active in the most minute details of their lives. But are you a member of this spiritual family? Would you like to be?

As the winds of change blow, you can know that a changeless God is in control of your life. Your joys will be more joyful and your sufferings dignified with meaning. What follows are four steps which summarize God's wonderful adoption process:

God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. "For God so loved the world," we read in John's Gospel, "that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (chapter 3, verse 16). Why is it that most people are not experiencing this abundant life?

Simply put, because man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," writes St. Paul in the New Testament book of Romans (3:23). Man was created to have fellowship with God; but, because of his stubborn self-will, he chose to go his own independent way, and fellowship with God was broken. This is evidence of what the Bible calls sin.

Our sin separates us from God. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death" (spiritual separation from God). How can this gulf of separation be bridged?

Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life. Basically, Jesus died in our place. "But God demonstrates His own love toward us," St. Paul writes, "in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Furthermore, He rose from the dead, validating His claim to be the only way to God. "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me'" (John 14:6). God has bridged the gulf that separates us from Him by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty of our sins.

Yet, it is not enough just to know these three facts are true. We must respond.

We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Only then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12). Receiving Christ invloves turning to God from self (repentance) and trusting Christ to come into our lives to forgive our sins and make us what He wants us to be.⁶

Would you like to become a part of God's family? Do you long for a stable center to your spinning world, a point of reference to make sense of the whirligig of change? Most important of all, do you yearn to know that your sins are forgiven and heaven is your home? We have provided you a sample prayer in the box below. Through this prayer, if it is your heart speaking, God will adopt you and His promises will apply to you.

This is the only way to find peace in change, for change is inevitable. As you step into the batter's box of life, you can be assured that whatever pitch may come—curveball, fastball or slider—you are assured to make it safely Home.

Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.

1. Danny Hills, "Why Do We Buy the Myth of Y2K?", Newsweek, May 31, 1999.
2. Zlata Filipovic, Zlata's Diary, A Child's Life in Sarajevo (New York, Penguin Books, 1994), p. 56.
3. Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (Colorado Springs, CO; NavPress; 1988), p. 27.
4. Ibid., p. 30
5. Matthew 10:29,31.
6. Adapted from the Four Spiritual Laws booklet by Bill Bright.