We stopped at a mall on the way home from work yesterday. Kevin needed a new pair of khaki chino-type pants for our trip, and we popped into an anchor department store to grab a pair.

Two hours later, we popped out.

Or pooped out might be the more appropriate terminology.

My husband is a trim, average-sized man. He is not typically hard to fit, not needing special sizes or anything that might require a special-order. But it was almost comical to watch him walk out of the dressing room in pant after pant of the SAME SIZE, and look like he was just grabbing them from a pile of random sizing. They all varied in length up to three inches, and while some were so tight he couldn’t breathe, others beckoned for a second party to jump on in.

It was ridiculous.

We moved from that original store on into the mall, trying every anchor store and several interior stores, but the story was the same in each one. Some folks tried to help us, but the majority of the sales personnel (if they looked at us at all) looked at us blankly, like we were crazy to expect pants of the same size to all have the same waist/length measurement.

We finally threw our hands up and left to go eat barbeque. I was frustrated, and more than a little saddened, by the whole affair. It seems just another area of our lives where standards have gone by the way-side. Excellence of quality, and pride in craftsmanship, have been traded in for an increase in mass-production with little attention to detail, not to mention the decline in customer service.

We are a society who has become offended at the idea of being held to a standard of any kind, and accountability is seen as a personal affront. We just do what we need to do to get ahead and rue the man who gets in our way.

Until it all starts to fall apart.

Until we realize that the structure we used to have – the one whose strong standards grew us up to this point – no longer works quite the way it used to. Suddenly, nothing can be counted on as dependable anymore.

Not even a bloomin’ pair of pants.

Thankfully, there is One Thing that hasn’t changed…One Constant that hasn’t wavered in the least. He’s the same, yesterday, today and forever. His Word is His bond, and His promises are unbreakable; standards to live by that don’t strangle, but gird us up and hold us together.

Just typing that out makes me feel better.

Incidentally, when we got home, I heard Kevin walk into our closet and suddenly say, “Oh YEAH!” And there, hanging side-by-side, were the two pair of khaki pants he’d bought last year.

That makes me feel better, too.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.” Revelation 1:8 NLT

“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6 MSG

“God is not man, one given to lies,
    and not a son of man changing his mind.
Does he speak and not do what he says?
    Does he promise and not come through?” Numbers 23:19 MSG

“No, I will not break my covenant;
    I will not take back a single word I said.” Psalm 89:34 NLT