Have you ever noticed that things have a habit of falling apart?
There is a scientific word for that, “Entropy.”
Stained glass, bell towers, planet earth, the sun, the moon and the stars.
Our bodies, our relationships, our sense of perspective, our faith.
It’s all just one big sandcastle and high tide is coming up quick to wash it away.
Eventually everything breaks down. Ashes, ashes we all fall down.
Unless something pulls it back together and rebuilds, restores, renews, recreates, resurrects.
There is a sense of futility to our existence, we give everything to hold things together until we can’t anymore.
But there is also faith in our Creator, that the one who pulls up life out of the dust, who holds all things together, there is faith that the one who orderest all things mightily, will bring all things together in the end into completion.
There are really two stories being told that narrate existence.
One is the story of futility and entropy.
And the other is the story of faith, of renewal, of resurrection.
Every day we have to choose which story we will live in.
We choose between grasping at not enough on one hand and giving thanks for the cup that runneth over on the other.
Choose one.
Hannah lived in a dead end, a left out forgotten place, until she prayed, and God interrupted that story with the hope and possibility of a new child, a new life. A story that began in a slow decline became a story of song and praise to the one brings life and light, who remembers those who are forgotten and left out.
Jesus spoke of all the stones falling down, of the world being trapped in rumors and wars and lies, and he tells us there is more, so much more, the new creation is being born, get ready, don’t give up.
There is futility but then there is faith.
There is entropy but then there is resurrection.
There is barrenness but then there is praise and song.
There is forsakenness but then there is Thanksgiving.
Every day we choose.