My husband and I love to share songs with each other. Some are ones we both know well or heard growing up. Others are numbers that only one of us has encountered, so we each have the joy of introducing each other to those and in broadening our repertoire.

One of the songs in the former group is a Margaret Becker classic called “Say the Name” (linked below). One day, Paul asked if I knew it as the intro bars started playing through his portable speaker. I smiled and showed my response by starting to sing along immediately.

But as we got to the chorus, he paused in his singing with me and said, “I have always loved this song…but WHAT is that word? I can’t ever make it out clearly!”

I paused in my humming and murmured, “Immutable. You know, as in can’t be turned off or silenced.”

“Ah.” He nodded with understanding and relief.

The actual line from the song says, “Say the name Jesus. Say the name that soothes the soul, the name of gentle healing and peace immutable…”

When I prepared to write my next blog post, I thought back on that moment and I paused to ponder the weight of that word more deeply.

To say that the peace of Christ is immutable means that it cannot and will not be silenced. Even when the circumstances of life derail and threaten and reroute us, that is a peace that still speaks if we will be still enough to listen to it.

And God himself is immutable. He cannot be silenced. Even though we may think we can speak for Him or rewrite and reinterpret His words, we are only fooling ourselves. In the end, His spoken words have always been and will always be true. And in the end, He will always have the final word in truth, judgment, and mercy.

I ended my pondering by asking myself if people are truly immutable. Certainly, we are not God and we are limited, and death ultimately silences our voice here on earth. Yet, what we leave behind in what we write or pass on to others before we pass away — those are messages that remain and continue, the kind of legacy (for good or ill) that makes us somehow immutable even after we are no longer breathing.

Then, when I searched my brain to come up with a synonym for immutable that expressed the human scope of the word in a single word and not a phrase, all I could think of was this: free.

While we are free, my friends, let us speak and write without fear. And even when our freedom is stripped or our breathing ceases, may goodness we have begun to spread be unsinkable, immutable.

Because of the power in the name of Jesus, through whom we must seek to do everything good. With the strength and peace He gives. For His glory.