There’s a Polaroid camera and a scrunchie sitting on the stairs. They’ll collect dust if I don’t mention them to their owners even though they’re in plain sight. That's the way it is with items on the stairs. They stay. I can count on it.

Particular life events are trustworthy. My stomach growls loudest when I’m amongst strangers in a quiet room. The guy gets the girl in Hallmark stories. I ask for a menu at my favorite restaurant and then order the same thing I always order. I think I’m deathly ill when I get a new kind of headache. The scales have too much say.

Some things never change. Like junk that mysteriously collects under beds or the way dogs have a fit when the mailman walks down the sidewalk. Remote controls get lost in couch cushions.

Most days are the same. We hurry around seldom stopping while wishing life would slow down.

Our favorite song causes us to tap our foot if we don’t acquiesce and sing it out loud. Grass embraces diversity and grows up through sidewalk cracks. Babies make us smile.

Some things never change. We know, though, that other things do. Fads fade. Sayings get old. Tastes change.

Seasons have finales.

Dynamic and the dependable intermingle. New and the ever-the-same meet.

Boys with fresh haircuts and girls with their backpacks full of pointy pencils and boxes of fresh crayons walk into their classrooms...and then let go of our hand.

Babies who make us smile turn into girls who move into dorms ...and then we force ourselves to smile.

Steady and adventure dance.

He who causes the grass to wither is the same one who brings out the starry host one by one and (night after night) calls forth each one by name.

Our God masterfully reshapes and rearranges, and yet He’s the Ancient of Days. It ought to make us hang on to Him for dear life. It ought to make us twirl. It ought to cause us to marvel.