Conservation
Engineers like everything to be the same, conserved, constant. Things like energy, mass, and momentum. When things are not constant and change, we have to write an equation and it becomes more complicated and messy. When things are not conserved we have to wonder where they've gone to, and start thinking about losses and efficiencies, which we don't like. We like to take the finite amount we have and spent it as well as possible; minimising losses, and maximising output. And so we come up with ways of keeping things as constant as possible in order to do so - we insulate our houses to keep heat in, we have reheat cycles in our powerstations to squeeze as much as possible from the fuel we put in. We guard our resourses and stop them from changing.
God is not an engineer. He does not deal in keeping things the same. He does not have finite resourses as an input. Let me give you an example to tell you what I mean. A friend gave me a twig a month ago - just a twig off a tree, without leaves, but it did have a white tip where leaves would have grown. I took it home, and, a couple of days later (oops!) put it into a glass of water. Just because I could. Now, it sits on my windowsill, with a whole host of leaves that are getting bigger each day. The leaves that are growing on that twig did not come from last years ones that died, fell off, were kept, and are now somehow being stuck on again. No, these leaves are new. They came from the air and the sunlight and the water; they have never been before, they are new. Now think about a tree in autumn. To the tree, God says, Let the dead leaves fall; do not try and keep them, let them go. There are more where they came from. To the leaves he says, Do not worry that I am finished with you. I have something else, something different now; you will be changed into a new thing. The key to this whole process is knowing that he has more where they came from. God does not have a finite supply of life to spend; he has life in abundance, in infinite volumes, in eternal time, and limitless magnitude. He doesn't have to worry about changes and constancy like engineers do, he can just spend and spend and spend and still have more where that came from. The leaves on my little twig have come from nothing - they weren't leaves before, and now they are.
Why does this matter? (You never really thought that God was an engineer anyway.) I want to encourage you to look for the things that are alive and growing, instead of finding something dead and trying to make it live again. In the things you choose to be involved in, find those that are living, not only things that are 'good' (but might be dead). Don't be scared of the small beginnings. Don't worry that things you hope for don't yet exist - they can be made from nothing. Don't be afraid to let go the dead things. Don't be scared to 'waste' life, to see it change - if it is real life, then there's more where that came from. Just a thought, :-) K
- Posted by flyingkiwi on 23/03/2007.
- flyingkiwi's site
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