Gravity

 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2)

like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, (I Peter 2:2)

 

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; (Romans 8:26)

 

There are many more verses that could be included above. The keys to changing course, according to Newton’s Second Law of Motion are to be acted upon by a greater force, and then not acted upon by any force that changes our course again. The problem is that we are constantly battered by forces that at least seem stronger than we are. Like the winds and the waves that distracted Peter, we see and feel these forces and if they overcome us, even for a moment, we feel as if we are in their power, meaning that less force is needed to move us even further off course.

While I’ve referred to “force” frequently, and technically, the term can refer to many things, the force that comes to mind most of the time is gravity. We don’t tend to notice it unless we fall, or unless it changes. But the reality is that we are constantly under the influence of gravity. Generally speaking, the larger (more massive) the object, the greater its gravitational pull. You pull on others. The world pulls more. If you went to Mars, while Mars would pull on you, it wouldn’t pull as hard. If you were able to stand on the sun (if there were a solid surface and if you could somehow avoid being reduced to atoms by the heat), you would find its gravitational pull stronger than that of earth. That’s why the plants stay in orbit around the sun and not around each other, or around you. There are larger stars with greater gravitational pull, and black holes that slowly pull everything into them with their gravitational pulls.

If we think along the lines of gravity – but in a spiritual or psychological sense, there are lots of “bigger bodies” with stronger “gravitational” force than we have. People we care about, people with dynamic personalities, ideas, images… all these either draw us toward them, or repel us away. But the greatest force in this regard is God. Like gravity, however, we don’t necessarily feel any of the forces exerted by these bigger bodies and therefore, we assume they either aren’t there or that they aren’t acting in our lives.

When things go wrong, it’s easy to assume that the greater force that is acting on us is pushing us off course in a bad way. I tend to become anxious. A small disturbance in my course and I feel like I have to start everything over. I over-react, whether you do or not. But I find myself wondering whether, if my life were mapped out like a planetary orbit, my orbit would be far less changed by the direct hits of “asteroids” or the pull of Jupiter than I think, because the sun/Son has such a strong pull on me.

The force needed to “free” a planet from the gravitational influence of the sun would destroy the planet. Even the force needed to change the orbit of a planet quickly would probably destroy it. For us to move out of God’s orbit damages us. And for all our concern that we’re falling away, I suspect the long-term effect is much less than we think it is. It simply takes too much energy.

But, God calls us to change. And in this, He offers Himself as the model, and promises to help us. We become anxious because we don’t see an immediate effect, but again, if we could map out our orbit, I suspect we’d see that what we think are major catastrophes actually don’t compare with His pull. We need to be aware, and strip away those things that disturb our gravity, but it's the force we don't notice that is the strongest.