The Only Way to Remove Darkness from Your Life

Anton Darius

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This month we talked about the principle, first credited to Aristotle, that nature abhors a vacuum. But rather than looking at the axiom through the lens of physics, we turn it sideways and use it to view our spiritual lives.

Here's how it starts:

The older I get, the more I recognize the universality of the axiom, nature abhors a vacuum. 

Want to know where to find my children? Go to whichever room is the tidiest. Once they've wrecked it, they move on to the next. They never play in their bedrooms unless the area is clean. Once it is sufficiently cluttered, they'll search for a neater space. 

But this isn't just true of children and play areas: 

-The newly retired quickly find their calendars fuller than when they had a job.
-In weather systems, high pressure always flows to low pressure.
-Adding more lanes to the freeway should alleviate traffic, right? Well, maybe not. Research shows that increasing throughput might actually promote congestion. 

It seems in many areas of life vacuums--which we'll loosely define as empty spaces or the lack of something--are unnatural and unstable. They don't last. 

We give the Greek philosopher Aristotle credit for first coming up with this principle even though he never stated the axiom as nature abhors a vacuum. The current phrasing seems to have originated with the French writer François Rabelais in the sixteenth century. 

Where am I going with this? 

While we're not as concerned with physics in this space, nevertheless I think the principle applies to our spiritual lives too.

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See you next month!

The Good Thing about Evil

When you first walk into the sanctuary of College Church of the Nazarene, the room seems smaller than it is. The back rows of pews have a claustrophobic feel since the low ceiling also serves as a base for the balcony above. But continue onward several paces and you leave the balcony behind, entering into a breathtakingly large and beautiful place to worship the LORD.

Atilla Kefeli (CC)

As an eight-year-old, it seemed even larger than it is. I used to lay on the pew—my chin on its rough red fabric—and stare at the ground. The tall ceilings boasted hundreds of light bulbs, and when the lights hit my parents' feet, they cast multiple shadows. There were at least four distinct shadows forming an X on the crimson carpet. Each was a different shade, as some shadows were layered upon others. This optical phenomenon intrigued me, and I would wave my hand over the ground to try and figure out which lights were casting which shadows. That is until my parents thumped me and told me to sit up.