My mother understood entropy better than any physicist or engineer I’ve ever known. Every spring and every fall Mom did top to bottom, side to side cleaning, clearing, creating, and curating of our house and all the stuff in it, including us kids. Likewise, Dad did repairs, remodeling, and general rummaging about, under Mom’s direction. Twice each year she fought the good fight against entropy, the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity per thermodynamics. She won all the battles except for the biological ones. The kids grew up, Mom and Dad grew old, and, eventually, entropy won.
With Christmas 2018 now in our rear view mirror, we are preparing for our national tradition of New Year’s resolutions. This usually is intended as our individual and social battles against this aspect of thermodynamics. Most of us will fail quickly, all will fail eventually. Still, the fight is worth the effort.
For a Christian, we have a kind of spiritual entropy with which we must challenge. It’s not the same as that of the world. We don’t lose our salvation, our spiritual condition does not return to some inert uniformity. No, we are made alive in Christ. This is not by us but by He who lives in us. Jesus imparts to us a vibrant life that is active now and will be fully manifested once the shackles of this world are thrown off.
However, we are not yet fully escaped from thermodynamic entropy. As we walk through this world its “dust” clings to us, attempting to return us back to its process of degradation. We need to get that worldly dust out. Though it reminds me of Mom, it is Jesus who taught us that it is important to clean the world off of us. This was memorialized when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. You can read the whole account in John, chapter 13. The verse I wanted to close with is verse 10, where Jesus says to Peter, ” Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean…“
Already, as a Christian, the laws of this old physical world have no hold on the regenerated you “…because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1 John 4:4 NIV)