How it Rolls

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Certain things, we are told, roll downhill. Anyone who has been in a chain of command, whether military or civil, will immediately assign a four-letter s-word to the top of the list (not that you would use the word yourself, tender Church, it’s simply what we’ve heard). And the Second Law of Thermodynamics goes so far as to say that all things run down, not up. Ouch.

     Thankfully, the Creator of the universe has provided a shining exception. Hope rolls uphill, not down. Rather than leaning on my own understanding, or asking you to, let’s consult what the Creator has said:

    Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:1-5).

 According to God-breathed Scripture, hope rolls along an uphill path through three necessary territories: suffering, endurance, and character. Given our druthers, we would have lobbed hope directly into “the glory of God,” sailing over the hard stuff. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (Romans 8:24). We are called upon to trust the process.

     To give the Second Law of Thermodynamics a fair shake, it has to be studied further. It’s not totally bogus; indeed, it is mostly right. Up front, it says that all things are running, and will continue to run, downward. The entire universe will, through irreversible processes, eventually sag into a state of universal deadness. The word often used for the deadness is “entropy.” Given my limited vocabulary, yeah, I had to look it up. In terms of thermodynamics, entropy is “a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system.” When all energy becomes unavailable, deadness happens.

     Unless.

     Unless there is, somewhere in the mix, a reversible process. Unless there is, already loose in the universe, an ultimate renewable resource. In my humble opinion, the best way to study the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to have the First Law firmly in hand: “Energy is neither created nor destroyed.” To put it in familiar terms: the fuel you burned leaving the green light converted thermal energy to kinetic energy; the brakes you applied stopping at the next red light converted the kinetic energy back to thermal energy. No energy was created or destroyed; the exchange was one-for one. Now I’ll admit, it can reasonably be said, “My gas tank goes empty; my brakes wear out. Isn’t that energy irretrievable, or, as the Second Law says, unavailable?” The answer is Yes and No. Irretrievable and therefore unavailable by conventional means? Yes. Ultimately irretrievable and unavailable? No.

     Enter hope.

     The Story of the End of History, aka the testimony of Jesus Christ to what must surely be, aka the Book of the Revelation, describes anything but disorder leading to universal deadness. It describes, rather, perfect order and beauty that left the apostle, at times, without sufficient words. The Second Law of Thermodynamics will, in the fulness of time, be relieved of its burden of deadness. And so will the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it (Revelation 1:3). Whoever has the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5); whoever has the mind of Christ (1Corinthians 2:16) – in other words, those who have an ear to hear – will hear the call to come up higher, to follow the ball of hope on its uphill roll.

     Romans Five, one-thru-five, is the road map. And maybe the best thing we can do in this walk-around world is figure out where on the map we are, to give a nod to those territories of suffering, endurance, and character… and triangulate our location. Did you suffer in that situation? Oh, brother, did I ever! And what was the outcome? Well, I came through it. And was endurance produced? Um, I guess so, yeah, or else I wouldn’t have come through. And was character produced? Now that you mention it, I did learn a thing or two about not getting myself into the same messes. Congratulations, brother! Congratulations, sister! My own experiments in suffering are producing the same results. There’s hope for us yet.

     What are you hoping for? By design, it will be out of sight for a while. The First Law of Thermodynamics gives proper context to the Second; the first law is the scientist’s expression of hope. Though mankind will never invent the instrument to measure it, hope runs out ahead, gathering the thermal energy of every far-flung star, the kinetic energy of every orbiting planet, the God-given soul energy of every prayer – to be gathered up into perfect order, according to the Creator’s plan.

     With Good Friday only a week away, I’m compelled to close out this letter with words of ultimate hope. It comes, again, from the letter to the Romans:

    If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (8:11). Yes, the crucifixion is a locatable historical fact. And so is the resurrection. As Friday was happening, Sunday was already on the way. Resurrection power is real – now and forever.

     Herein is hope.

  

Grace and Peace (for the onward and upward),

 

John