Legacy

Tonight I was at a party celebrating the 40^th anniversary of some dear friends. They greatly helped me out when I needed it a couple of years ago. Coincidentally, there were about 40 people there tonight. (I didn’t count, but it is a reasonable estimate.)

Tony and Felicity have hardly wasted their lives. They have worked together to build a strong business, a series of books, a global house church ministry, and dozens if not hundreds of house churches. Somewhere in all of that, they raised four amazing children to adulthood, all of whom are successful in their many ventures, including seven grandchildren with one more on the way. They have lived generously and graciously, and I have been blessed to come under the radiant shadow of those blessings.

At the party was a lot of visiting, feasting on fajitas, toasts, cake, slideshow of their lives, and prayer over them. At one point, after having people show their gratitude and praise, I reflected on how much of their lives they have eagerly given to others, yet without diminishing their own relationship. I think it is how they have worked so well together inviting others into their lives. I don’t think they even view it as “giving their time.” Rather, it comes across as living life together with people. If you give your time away, there is a sense of having lost it, of not being able to do what you want to do with it.

Murphy, Time and Entropy

Today was the first day where students were actually performing labs in my classes for the semester. As usual for the first day, there were a large number of rough spots, some major, some minor. There seemed a bit more than normal for a first day, and I had inadvertently scheduled my two newest TA’s for the honors. Nothing like a trial by fire! They’re experts now and can handle anything.

It has always struck me as odd that experimental setups that worked perfectly at the end of last semester should accumulate problems when just sitting there for a few weeks. Nor are all of the problems similar. Each is unique and apparently untraceable to any specific cause. Some seem to just fix themselves if you give them time (to wake up? Does Starbucks have a mechanical or electrical equivalent for espresso?) Murphy seems to delight in demonstrating a corollary to “Time heals all wounds”:  “Time breeds all manner of bugs.” Entropy is alive and well.

This idea reminds me of a conversation Dad and I had some years ago about houses and buildings in general. We both had noticed that abandoned buildings seem to deteriorate faster than occupied buildings. This is odd given that occupied buildings have people and things banging into the walls, dropping on the floors, etc. Sure, you might be saying—there is the maintenance factor, silly. An abandoned building doesn’t have people fixing problems as they arise. True. But Dad and I have observed that it is more than that. There actually seems to be something spiritual going on behind the scenes that is hard to explain and in today’s culture, hard to believe or accept. But I argue there is ‘something’ going on beyond the obviously physical.

There is a sense of lifelessness about an abandoned site that does not appear in an occupied site, even if the occupants are temporarily away for the day or other short period of time. We have a perception of abandonment that is not obvious to the naked eye—the converse to the times when we sense someone behind us or looking at us, but the same flavor of experience. Without that sense of place, the abandoned site seems to succumb to entropy faster than an occupied site, even if no maintenance is occurring.

It would be an interesting experiment to build three identical homes, next to each other. Without telling anyone what was going on, keep one empty, and have families move into the other two, but one family would maintain their home and one wouldn’t, and see the difference in the three over time. Not very practical, but it would be interesting.

As I pondered this, I remembered Colossians 1:15-17: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

“…and in Him all things hold together.” Scripture indicates that the very universe requires God for it to hold together in some mysterious way-- that if God were to abandon the universe, it would fall apart. Is there a correlation or am I reaching for straws? I’m not sure, but on some level it seems to make sense.

If you will indulge me, I’ll carry it even further. If you won’t, stop reading now, because, well, I’m carrying it further to see where it leads. In II Thessalonians 2, it talks about the son of perdition or lawlessness being held in restraint until the restraining force (either the Spirit or the church or both) is removed. At that point, Scripture indicates that the plagues and judgments of Revelation begin. When you read those plagues and judgments, it sure sounds like the universe is simply falling apart on itself, imploding. In the light of the Colossians and Thessalonians passages, this makes sense in a whole new way that I had never considered before. Is this interpretation correct or even reasonable? I don’t know. As is normal, I’m sharing things here as they come through my brain, seeing where they lead.

But just maybe, there is more to this world than our modern, technology based minds can perceive or understand.

SDG

Like a Perfectly Thrown Football

It’s New Year’s Day 2011, and I should be saying something pithy about that, but I already have, sort of, yesterday, and today want to continue my thoughts on time.

Time has fascinated us, well, since we were first aware of the concept. So many stories in our literature dream of moving at will, back and forth through time. The oldest I can recall are how some of the Arthurian legends describe Merlin moving backward through time, becoming younger, and his memory moved backwards, which is how he knew others’ future, because it was his past. Even the idea of prophecy has exhilarated us because of the glimpses of another time it offers.

Most of physics and even chemistry is heavily dependent on time in their fundamental theorems and formulas. Yet, while most of science views time as something in constant motion, Einstein peskily showed it doesn’t. This of course is not a surprise to most humans, who have long been aware of time’s apparent inconstancy. Einstein even quipped about it, “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.”

It is further interesting that the West as a whole views time as linear (Creation to Apocalypse), whereas the East tends to think of it as cyclical (the Yin and Yang, death and rebirth). As I pondered these ideas in high school or college, I remembered the story of the blind men and the elephant. Five blind men were brought to a zoo and allowed to explore an elephant. The first, feeling the ears, perceived the animal as a large fan. The second, feeling the leg, believed it to be a tree trunk. And so on. Afterward, they fell to arguing about the nature of the elephant because each only had a limited experience with an elephant and not with the whole critter. Was time similar?

It occurred to me that perhaps time in a sense moves in a spiral—some cyclical aspects, but not truly repeating, and that we do move linearly through time, but not in a straight line—like we are traveling along a coil of spring or a football in a perfect spiral.

Do I have proof? No. But isn’t it just like God to give some of the information to some folks, and a different set to other folks, with the idea that we should bring our knowledge together and mutually encourage and edify each other, thus bringing greater glory to Himself? And, isn’t it just like us to start bashing each other over the head because we believe we have complete understanding and therefore, anyone who thinks differently is automatically wrong?

There is his story, her story, and, somewhere in between, the truth.

PS—Is this a subtle form of universalism? Stay tuned true believers…

SDG

"Year in Review"

It is strange how one day makes a difference just because of how it falls in some arbitrary numbering scheme. Until something less than 2000 years ago, December 25 was just a cold day in the Northern Hemisphere. Until 2001, September 11 was just another fall day early in the school year. And just because of the way the Julian calendar was set up and corrected over time, today is the last day of the year.

Even so, people feel a need to sit back and look over the events over the last 365 days and draw significance from them. It often gets reduced to lists, such as the “10 Best and Worst…,” who was born and died, how long one’s resolutions lasted and so on. The born and died is actually probably the most significant of these, and I like looking at those lists because it reminds us of our mortality and the influence that those had that are no longer with us. Some I’d heard about, and some I hadn’t. More and more of the actors I grew up watching, enjoying and even admiring, are gone.

Some have said that the only constant is change, and this time provides the opportunity to examine those changes and meditate on their impact on our lives. Which changes did we induce and which came to us externally? How then do we respond to them and be more proactive today? The opportunities for both reflection and navel-gazing are endless.

What does God think of this? Is this some arcane form of idolatry, or some distraction from looking to Him? Not necessarily. Throughout Scripture, He commanded the Hebrews to remember their past and key events in it. Their feasts, festivals and other celebrations had the purpose of reminding them who they are and Whose they are. They also pointed forward to the consummation of history in the incarnation, so that those with eyes to see would recognize the Messiah when He came. Even in the Gospels, Christ required us to remember. We are to remember Him, His sacrifice, and His resurrection through Communion. What a word—communion—to come together in a profound unity, joining as the singular Body and Bride of Christ to remember the day of our Redemption and to prepare us for the day of our Marriage to Him. Looking back and also pointing forward. Either without the other is incomplete and will lead us astray.

We look back to see how we got through the tough times and how we lost the good times so that we can recognize the signposts ahead. We look ahead to see the coming together of all of the threads and pieces into a single story, a complete resolution revealed, the darkly-seeing mirror cleared, giving meaning to the lessons of the past. Well and good is January named. Janus, the doubly-faced Roman god that looked both backwards and forward, symbolizes the continuity of time and our need to live in the present, yet fully aware of both the past and the future.

Someone once said that for most people, history began the day they were born, which is why older people tend to be wiser than younger. The truly wise refuse to be bound by this axiom and seek to stretch their understanding of history beyond their own experience.

Even in time, context is important. The past, present and future have a dynamic relationship to the person riding the temporal wave through the universe, and wisdom is found in rightly reading its currents.

SDG