A Tale of 3 Cities: #2: Jefferson

East Texas is home to the delightful, historic town of Jefferson, once the sixth-biggest town in the state. The whole place is like a beautifully well-preserved museum and makes its money from tourism. From 1845 to 1872 Jefferson was the terminus for riverboats that carried people on the Red River from there to north Texas and Oklahoma. The place bustled and thrived with people traveling and doing business in this prominent Texas town on the edge of the expanding frontier. It is said that the railroad magnate Jason Gould wanted to build a railroad through Jefferson and make it a railway transfer point. But the mayor and town leaders responded that they didn’t need any railroads; the riverboats were doing just fine for the town.

They never imagined things would change. Their vision never went past the thought that they’d always have the riverboats. But soon after that the federal government used newly invented nitroglycerin to clear the massive downriver logjams for navigation to Shreveport. And in turn the water levels upstream, where Jefferson was, dropped too low for the riverboats to operate. Commerce plummeted, and the people who remained in Jefferson grew desperate. But it was too late. Gould had already chosen another town that would now become a rail transportation center. The other little town was a place called Dallas.

Who would have thought?

Is there anything in your life that seemed, or seems, positive and sure—and you had, or have, no need to change or worry?
When life is like that, we feel secure.
Life is good.
And we can easily become complacent.
We may think life will always go on as it is (called the normalcy bias).
We may see no reason to change or to imagine the future will be different.
But things do change.
They can change a lot, and they can change quickly.

Change is inevitable, and it happens faster and faster.

What is one thing in your life that has changed like this?
Or one thing in your life that could change like this?

King David writes in Psalm 30:6–7,
     When I felt secure, I said,
         “I will never be shaken.”
     Lord, when you favored me,
         you made my royal mountain stand firm;
     but when you hid your face,
         I was dismayed.

When all is well, we may look great and feel great. When they’re not, we may struggle. And God allows it. That’s the way life is—we’re not in heaven yet. And those are the things that remind us of our need to depend on him.

When you face change in your life, what will you do to ride that change rather than get run over or left by the wayside?

May you ride that change well.