From THE UNCHANGEABLENESS OF GOD (1855)
On the changing and the unchanging.
“You will experience how persons change, how you yourself change. At times it will even seem as if God changes, which is part of the upbringing. … At times the change will be such that you are reminded of the saying: “Change is pleasing”—yes, indescribably. There will also come times when you yourself invent a saying that language has suppressed, and you say: “Change is not pleasing—how could I even say change is pleasing?” When that happens, you will be particularly led…to seek him, the unchangeable one.”
On September 3, 1855, in the midst of his so-called “attack upon Christendom,” Kierkegaard issued a short discourse called The Unchangeableness of God. He had been working on this piece since 1851, but the timing of its release is impossible to ignore. The summer of 1855 had been physically and spiritually taxing on Kierkegaard, and, while the symptoms of his final illness would not fully manifest until late September, doubtless he was feeling poorly around the time that The Unchangeableness of God appeared. With this in mind, it is hard not to see in the above passage a certain poignance. “Change is not pleasing”—indeed, illness has a way of disclosing this uncomfortable reality. And yet, ever the dialectician, Kierkegaard uses the changeableness of earthly life as a reminder of God’s unchanging benevolence, which is the only place of “rest” (Hvile) for the weary sojourner.