Tozer Devotional
 
Collective Writings from the Books of A.W. Tozer
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
We Travel an Appointed Way
Chapter #29
The Unchanging World of Men
 

The Changing External and the Unchanging Internal
While Jesus grew through the various stages of developing childhood, He never saw a mechanical device more complicated than a cart. He never saw paper, or plastic, or a telephone, or a radio, or a camera, or a printed sheet, or a paved highway, or a gun, or a steam engine, or an electric motor. No one in His day ever got vaccinated or took vitamin pills or consulted a psychiatrist or had a song recorded or rode in a balloon or airplane or elevator. The people of His time had to get along without floating soap, chlorophyll toothpaste, rubber gloves, ready-mix flour, canned peas, Alka-seltzer, parking meters, Wheaties, puffed rice, electric razors, in-a-door beds, wristwatches, typewriters and Band-aids. Jesus never nursed from a rubber nipple or ate a scientifically compounded formula or played with an "educational" toy or attended a progressive school or saw a comic book or owned a toy bomb shelter.
Judged against our present highly complicated manner of life, the people of Palestine in the days of Christ's flesh scarcely lived at all. Were we forced suddenly to live as they did, we would feel that the bottom had dropped out of the world. Surely people who lived so close to nature could not be "real people" (to borrow the language of the liberals).
 
But they were real human beings all right, those simple people of Bethlehem and Capernaum. And the striking thing is that they were exactly the kind of people we are. Not one minor variation distinguishes them from us. Only the externals were different. Those things that have changed belong to the outer man; the inner man has not changed in the slightest.
 
Prayer
O Christ, in You is life--life that endures eternally even though I die physically. May I so live.
Scripture
Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. Do you believe this?'
—John 11:25-26
Thought
It's true, isn't it, that the external changes at such a rapid pace that looking back or ahead we marvel at revolutionary change. And yet the heart -needs of men and women remain the same--Christ in whom is life!