Small

What the Stars Said

Under a Polluted Sky

I sat outside tonight. I was watching the wind blow through the trees and saw what is unseen. The wind. I then looked above at the stars and thought to myself, I am going to sit by the pool and lie back and just stare at God’s beauty. There is a lot of light pollution where I live, so I did not get to see the night sky in all its glory, but I saw enough. God is glorious. There are stars billions of miles away that shine for you and me. It humbled me seeing a star actually flicker, and I may have seen a shooting star, but it just as easily could have been a bird or something flying across the sky, or a satellite. But the experience just made me feel small. Not in a bad way, but in a way of, “Is this life really it?” I know it is not due to my faith, but while I am here on this earth, is this really it?

The Questions Nobody Answers

Will my life revolve around politicians making decisions on my behalf, plotting out my future? Will my life revolve around the economy, which will determine the prices I pay for a home, groceries, gas, transportation, and more? Will my life simply be the output of numerous inputs, some of which I cannot even control?

There is nothing wrong with that, but it makes me rethink this world. Why is it that China is our adversary when they hold family in their values, as do I? Why is there hunger in Africa when I leave food on my plate because I am too full? Why is the world unjust? Why is evil good and good evil? Why are the rich and the guilty safer than the poor and the innocent? (Propaganda/Lecrae, Gangland). Why is life so hard for all of us, no matter our situations?

The Real Diagnosis

It is not due to one man, woman, party, system, society, race, religion, or any other metric we choose to separate mankind into. It is simply mankind, and mankind, left to itself, only knows one direction: inward, downward, and away from God.

We cannot live without decay. It is in our thoughts, ways, ideas, and even our DNA. Literally.

Everything Unwinds

There is a thing called entropy in the second law of thermodynamics. It states that everything, when left alone, follows the same path: order to disorder.

Paul described it better than any physicist could.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 (AMP)

But understand this, that in the last days dangerous times [of great stress and trouble] will come [difficult days that will be hard to bear]. ² For people will be lovers of self [narcissistic, self-focused], lovers of money [impelled by greed], boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane, ³ [and they will be] unloving [devoid of natural human affection, calloused and inhumane], irreconcilable, malicious gossips, devoid of self-control [intemperate, immoral], brutal, haters of good, ⁴ traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of [sensual] pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith].

The Bidding War We Never Consented To

When left alone from God, due to their own iniquity, mankind follows the same entropy pattern. When man is forced by his own doing to change the world into something better, he will always fail. We see it all over the globe. We have a system built on extraction, to always go to the top bidder or the hardest worker. To get to work, we must fight to get there on time, battling others doing the same thing, just to get a paycheck to make it to the next. To be valued in our society, we must provide a skill, which is good, but what happens when that skill is not as valued as another? What do we tell the best typist when computers rolled around? Or what do we say to the taxi driver when Uber came out? What happened to his job stability when anyone and everyone could become their own taxi driver? Why can investors bet on which schools will do better and which students in those schools get higher grades or place in better colleges? Or investors betting on the juvenile delinquency rates? All of which are real and disgusting. Or how about the extraction of health and money from pill pushers, when in older times we had far cleaner methods of diagnosing symptoms? Why is health insurance so expensive when it is the basis on which some live? Either get the surgery and go into debt, or don’t get the surgery and die? Why can stores price-gouge in life-or-death scenarios like when natural disasters occur? Why are some races better off than others?

When did God make us work or bid for His grace? When the Lord God Almighty chose to make heaven negotiable to be bid upon, to make us fight to get in? Why does our world not reflect the free gift of grace that He gave us? Instead, we have greed, lust, fame, fortune, health, all of which have to be bought with something, most of which is time.

Maximum Disorder

The thermodynamic equilibrium states that a system reaches maximum disorder when energy stops flowing.

A soul without God is a closed system and closed systems do not plateau; they collapse.

What the physicist calls equilibrium, Paul simply called death.

Ephesians 2:1-3 (AMP)

And you [He made alive when you] were [spiritually] dead and separated from Him because of your transgressions and sins, ² in which you once walked. You were following the ways of this world [influenced by this present age], in accordance with the prince of the power of the air (Satan), the spirit who is now at work in the disobedient [the unbelieving, who fight against the purposes of God]. ³ Among these [unbelievers] we all once lived in the passions of our flesh [our behavior governed by the sinful self], indulging the desires of human nature [without the Holy Spirit] and [the impulses] of the [sinful] mind. We were, by nature, children [under the sentence] of [God’s] wrath, just like the rest [of mankind].

Written Into the Code

We have to remember that this world was never designed to fix itself. The ruler of this world is Satan, and he has no interest in order, only in accelerating the collapse.

And the decay is not only spiritual. It is biological. It is written into the very code that makes you human.

Cornell geneticist Dr. John Sanford proved what Genesis and Jeremiah already declared: the human genome is not evolving upward; it is decaying downward. Every generation inherits the mutations of the last and adds roughly 100 of its own. No internal mechanism corrects it. The code degrades with every copy. Entropy is not just a law of physics. It is written into your DNA.

Jeremiah 7:26 (AMP)

²⁶ Yet they did not listen to Me and obey Me or bend their ear [to hear Me], but stiffened their neck; they did more evil and behaved worse than their fathers.

Each generation is more despicable than the last.

The Outside Source

But there is hope. Negentropy. The principle that entropy can only be reversed by an outside energy source. Something that comes from beyond the system entirely.

Ephesians 2:4-10 (AMP)

⁴ But God, being [so very] rich in mercy, because of His great and wonderful love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were [spiritually] dead and separated from Him because of our sins, He made us [spiritually] alive together with Christ (for by His grace—His undeserved favor and mercy—you have been saved from God’s judgment). ⁶ And He raised us up together with Him [when we believed], and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, [because we are] in Christ Jesus, ⁷ [and He did this] so that in the ages to come He might [clearly] show the immeasurable and unsurpassed riches of His grace in [His] kindness toward us in Christ Jesus [by providing for our redemption]. ⁸ For it is by grace [God’s remarkable compassion and favor drawing you to Christ] that you have been saved [actually delivered from judgment and given eternal life] through faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [not through your own effort], but it is the [undeserved, gracious] gift of God; ⁹ not as a result of [your] works [nor your attempts to keep the Law], so that no one will [be able to] boast or take credit in any way [for his salvation]. ¹⁰ For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us].

What the Stars Actually Said

So while we see the world around us devolving into chaos and disorder, we must remember what the stars reminded me tonight: we are not the source. He is. I sat outside tonight and felt small. But small in the hands of the God who made those stars is the safest place a man can be.