[Image: Waiting, 2013, JA Van Devender]
Location: Old Faithful, Yellowstone, Nt. Park.
Isaiah 8:16–17 (NKJV)
16 Bind up the testimony, Seal the law among my disciples.
17 And I will wait on the Lord, Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; And I will hope in Him.
Sometimes you know "something's coming"... the intuition that that "hammer is about to fall" is so pervasive as to be inescapable.
Sometimes "the Lord... hides His face from Jacob."
The confluence of events has produced a swirling uncertainty that permeates the social consciousness these days. Every poll reflects a level of anxious anticipation that, in my lifetime, appears unprecedented. It is interesting to me that during the height of the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear annihilation, though distant, was real. It was kind of "just there." But the ordinary Joe mostly just went on with his life, mostly confident that somehow or someway things were going to be OK. The economy and the prosperity of this country, not to say all the others, was headed up and though there were crises and scandals aplenty, yet the overall good humor remained.
Today "good humor" and confidence is not very apparent at all. Dissatisfaction, even embarrassment, with our national leadership characterizes the entire spectrum of adult awareness. The stock market is high and people cling to that strange phenomenon but no one can really give a good answer for why it is so. World events have a chilling "we've been here before and it didn't turn out very well" tone to them. On the whole, it's as if we are waiting on a bench for an eruption to happen. We know it's coming... we sense that God is not going to pull our rabbit out of His hat... and therefore, it's just a matter of time.
I am amazed at how this has affected so many. There is an entire generation that has so despaired of the situation that they make no effort to stay current in what is happening. They feel completely helpless.
I heard a young man being interviewed last night, an expert on computer social networks, and he was challenged with the question: "What are the implications for our individual privacy when there is so much data available about us on the social networks?" (This conversation was prompted by the news that FaceBook now has the capability of identifying virtually anyone through software that makes facial recognition 97% accurate and the fact that they have billions of photos, world wide, of people to sort through.) The young man, with a straight face, replied... "there is no such thing as privacy anymore... get used to it."
This man, in my opinion, represents an entire cross section of the population. Governments, big business, commercial interests are understood as being somewhat beyond the pale of limitations. Laws are meaningless... they will do what they want and generally get away with it. Further, when this is coupled with the prevailing reality of unrest throughout the globe... images flashing across YouTube showing raging crowds flinging rocks through clouds of tear gas, Russian paratroops floating down on Crimean soil and massing along Ukraine's border, a huge airplane mysteriously disappearing, .... the thought that there are converging lines of events that must collide at some point.
And so it goes. Anxiety fills the air and escapism becomes the primary means of dealing with it.
With Isaiah though, Christians need to see that this is a time of opportunity. Into this despair we need to cling to and proclaim hope. I recently heard a missionary to Japan tell of how his attempts at penetrating the Japanese society were virtually fruitless for over 20 years. A turning point came when the massive tsunami ripped the northern Japanese island apart, leaving a wake of destruction that had not been experienced there since World War II. People were without food, water, electricity or transportation. What they noticed was, due to the prevailing concern about radiation, that everyone who could was fleeing the area, abandoning their neighbors and fellow citizens, but there was one group, Christians, who were traveling to the area, organizing relief, sometimes in pick up trucks, and just trying to help.
They were few in number... their total objective impact was small compared to what came later... but their witness was huge. People noticed... and things began to change.
We may sense what is coming... but our job is to wait on the Lord while we watch and be prepared for whatever we may be required to do, if and when His will is that something erupts.
A Trillioneth of A Trillioneth of A Trillioneth of a Second.....
[image: Moving Mountains, 2013, JA Van Devender]
Genesis 1:3 (NKJV)
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
The scientific world is evidently aflutter. Several articles in today's news (SEE NYT version HERE) joyfully confirm Einstein's predictions that there should be "ripples" in the space-time continuum that reflect the "inflation" that happened a t=0 - the beginning of "time" - when the "big bang" suddenly produced what is now called, the universe. The Baltimore Sun version stated that the time involved was a trillioneth of a trillioneth of a trillioneth of a second. Prior to this there was "nothing" (I'll come back to this) and after this interval, there existed a field of energy, now moving uniformly and with an essentially even temperature, expanding at the speed of light. Note - the period of "inflation" being infinitesimal required that the energy "travel" from its point of origin to the trillion of light years distance that it reached at an infinitely greater speed than light.
In other words... there was "nothing" and then there was "something" spanning the distance now known as the limits of the universe (as it existed then). No known laws of physics can explain how this works, since even Einstein's law, if I remember correctly posits the speed of light as a constant limit on all mass and velocity. It's been over 40 years since I got my degree in Physics so I might not be absolutely accurate in that last statement.
Further all of this is simply predicated on the size of the known universe of which our galaxy is only a very small part. As the NYT article itself states:
Confirming inflation would mean that the universe we see, extending 14 billion light-years in space with its hundreds of billions of galaxies, is only an infinitesimal patch in a larger cosmos whose extent, architecture and fate are unknowable. Moreover, beyond our own universe there might be an endless number of other universes bubbling into frothy eternity, like a pot of pasta water boiling over.
It is unreasonable to believe that our "universe" is all there is... so, if beyond the "out there" of our universe there lies other universes... then it seems that they must have come about in the same manner as our universe... perhaps at the same "instant"... which means that if no sequence of events is postulated, then all that exists, owes its origin to some scientifically inexplicable 'cause', the first manifestation of which was that suddenly, anywhere and everywhere, there exists "energy", moving and flowing at its present mopey rate (only the speed of light). And that all that is was formed from and through this energy in some form of contracting, expanding ripple effect that caused energy to transition to mass and the all powerful forces of "nature" then proceeded to bring about suns and moons and water and land and in due time, life.
And people call us Christians irrational because we believe in miracles.
I am not going to touch on the vexed question of "age"... it is not germane to the present point. All that I might mention is this.
At present there is no intellectual framework for conceiving of the situation that existed at t=-1sec. prior to the Big Bang. We can say that "nothing" existed but that is not quite precisely true. When we use the term "nothing" we cannot even give meaning to the word apart from referring it to some spatial parameters, e.g. length, breadth, height and time. We say that there is "nothing" between two limits at a given time. However, prior to the formation of "something" we really cannot even speak of "nothing." The point is this - prior to the dividing line (and that is what it really is) that people call t=0 - there is nothing in human empirical understanding to describe the circumstances.
To state that all the energy/mass of the present universe was infinitely small is meaningless... for that would mean that it existed apart from any definite limits which is to say it did not "exist" except in potential. To state that something exists only in potential is to say that it exists only in "thought." There is the congruence which, from time immemorial, has always made man assume that there was a prior cause to the existence of all things... that this prior cause was intelligent... and that the existence of the universe was the result of actions by this intelligence.
I know that much pagan thought began with the idea of an eternal universe in which the "gods" acted. But even there, the universe as it was understood, reflected order and intention.
Against all of man's speculation on these matters there stands the thundering power of Genesis 1:3. Before all space and time there was God. Space and time began with God's intentional speaking. The result of His intentional speaking was that the entire concept of "void" was established and simultaneously this "void" was filled, front to back (metaphorically speaking) with light (energy). And from this beginning, this infinitely small amount of time... this trillioneth of a trillioneth of a trillioneth of a second duration... all other potential began to actualize.
Some wise man once said that the telos, the "end", the culminating event toward which all human scientific endeavor is directed, can be compared to a man climbing a high mountain, struggling upward foot by foot, until he reaches the pinnacle, only to discover there a priest who had been there all along.
What I hope is one result of this current "discovery" is that previously arrogant human beings might suddenly fall to their knees and cry... "My God, how great Thou art!"
Posted by Gadfly on March 18, 2014 at 10:07 AM in Commentary, Culture, Movies, etc., Current Affairs, Discipleship | Permalink | Comments (2)
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