THE NEWS THAT BALDWIN AVENUE would be closed for construction for two years took me by surprise.

I had heard rumors of plans to build a bridge for trains and an underpass for vehicular traffic, but the closing was sudden and swift and I was caught off guard.

For the past five years, I had been driving the same exact route to the inheritance office — the closing of Baldwin was an enormous inconvenience and an annoyance to my perfectly sound routine.

I was left with little choice but to find a new route to work, a process that was often disorienting and frustrating. A few times, when I wasn’t paying attention, I instinctively found myself driving back toward Baldwin — it’s hard getting rid of old habits!

Change is a strange thing.

Sometimes it’s all we long for, like when we seek deliverance from an injustice or adversary. Change can give us hope that something or someone somewhere will lead us to a better tomorrow.

Other times, change is the very thing we want to avoid, and we’ll do everything in our power to maintain the status quo and keep what we’ve worked so hard to build. Even when something inherently better might be offered, we stick to what’s comfortable.

Other times, change is the very thing we want to avoid.

It also doesn’t help that we’re not always in the position to choose whether change happens or not — it’s often decided for us.

In this issue, Metamorphosis, we feature stories about people who experienced a change or are currently in the middle of one, and what it means to be stuck between the now and the not yet. Whether it’s about changing jobs, the nature of a relationship, or how we see ourselves, change tends to make things quite complicated.

Whether we like it or not, change is inevitable. And whether the change was for better or for worse, we are inevitably changed forever.

Two years later, construction is over and Baldwin Avenue is again open. And though I find the underpass extremely convenient, I’ve decided that my new route is still the better of the two.

My prayer is that one of the stories in this issue relates to whatever struggles and changes you may be going through in your life.

But even more importantly, I pray that you know that God has not abandoned you, and that through it all, in the good times and the bad, He will never leave you, just as He has promised.