I think that the radio spot was about Saint Francis of Assisi, but I am not sure. It was about a saint, and all the good he had done and would be remembered for. He was wonderful, but the comment was also made, “He wasn’t always that way.” He had not always lived the saintly life. There was a time, as with all people, that he was a lost and floundering soul, separated from the God he would come to love. He was perhaps unaware of the separation, or even what causes it, but separated non-the-less. He was not always the man he became after the Lord got a hold of him.

I wonder if sometimes God remembers a time past in a certain Garden of Creation and looks down upon this world, in all of the recklessness and rebellion of man, and says, “He (mankind) wasn’t always like this. He used to be perfect. I would walk and talk with him freely--no barriers between us. We were so close it was difficult to tell where he began and We ended. He wasn’t always this way. There were better days.”

My thoughts go to a couple I know, who faithfully care for their disabled daughter. She is in a wheelchair. She tries to walk, but the neurological connections get confused. She tries to speak, but the words get lost between her brain and her voice. She wasn’t always like that. There was a time when she was a playful 2 year old, romping around with 3 older brothers, pigtails flying behind her. That was before the high fevers seized her little body and wrecked havoc on parts of her brain. She wasn’t always that way.

The same words echo from a set of parents of a teenager now clad in black, with a sullen look. They remember a child in carefree play and abandon, in long lost days of smiles and laughter.

Something dramatic or traumatic happens, and we are not the same. The changes can be for the worse, or they can be for the better. For mankind as a whole, deception prevailed, and our free access to the Creator was lost. We were not the same after that. For Saint Francis, the risen Christ prevailed, and that access was returned. In our fallen state we search. Then something dramatic and traumatic happens, and we are forever changed. The first fall of mankind was not a positive one, but the second change gives us everything. When God looks at us and thinks, “He (mankind) wasn’t always that way,” He also knows that we won’t always be this way. The Son, Jesus, came to break the curse upon man, so they would not have to forever stay the way they had become.

It is true we were not always the way we are as a whole at this time, and it is true that we will not always be this way. The Bible says that all of creation groans, waiting for our redemption (Romans 8:19-22). It also states that in a moment… in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed (1Corinthians 15:51-52). We will gather with all of the saints (Francis included) in proclaiming our freedom and new eternal life, bought for us with the Lamb’s blood (1 John 3:2-3; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

Struggling with the hardships of life, we find Jesus and we are changed and saved. At the end of time, we will be made fully complete- out of this body of sin and death and into our new eternal home. Thank God we won’t always be this way.