Navigating Life: The Essential Equations

There is a symmetry and beauty to all of God’s creation, and this includes the laws of nature. Equilibrium, for example, is a constant state of balance between opposing forces. The calm after a storm reveals the atmosphere’s equilibrium, the balance between low- and high-pressure systems. There is a profound parallel between this and the seasons of our lives. Sometimes our lives can feel way out of equilibrium! We long for peace as we try to navigate through times that are hard to understand and harder still to survive.

For centuries humans have been trying to understand and describe the forces of the cosmos through pictures, words, and equations.  It’s one thing to describe how something works in an equation and quite another to actually experience it.  For example, there are equations that describe how gravity works on something (i.e. the G-force).  But when you actually feel the G-force on your body while riding a roller coaster or a fighter jet you have a whole new frame of reference on which to draw. It’s the same with life: storms and uncertainty in our world, the economy, health, and relationships can seem distant until we are personally affected by them.

Years ago, a good friend of mine did a message series entitled “Essential Equations” that illustrated spiritual truths about God through the use of creative diagrams and equations. The point of this series was that God is always the answer, even when we don’t understand our situation or see an end to our trials. My friend asked me to write a song for that series, so I asked God for inspiration.  Little did I know that the song would be born out of a time of intense physical pain and medical procedures.

One Sunday night, after an out-of-town concert, I suddenly got very ill, and my wife rushed me to the ER where I passed out. I don’t remember much about my overnight hospital stay other than waking up the next day and discovering I was diagnosed with a large, painful kidney stone. (My doctor later advised me that, as a runner, I needed to drink a lot more water!) The following weeks included medical procedures to blast the stone and finally remove the temporary stent the doctor put in near my kidney.

There were two opposing forces I experienced during that time:

1) The pain and uncertainty of my situation

2) God’s promise that He is with and for me and is working everything out for my good.

During the next weeks I spent a lot of time resting, as well as talking with God and reading from my Bible. There was one passage that really spoke to me:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,  and he will make your paths straight”

(from Proverbs 3)

Those words leapt from the page and became my own proclamation of God’s faithfulness to me, even when circumstances and challenges don’t make sense. A few days later, a song came to me that I later recorded with the Namesake Band and our good friend Chelsea Kimball. It also became the theme song for my friend’s message series.  Here is the free link to hear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmCdWi0WcEg

There will be times when life throws us unexpected storms and it’s easy to lose spiritual equilibrium. There are limits to our human understanding so we can’t simply think our way out of life’s storms. Here’s the good news: God is always willing and able to bring order and equilibrium out of the storms and strong forces that come against us. While on earth, our lives will be be marked by both times of storms and times of calm. In all circumstances I pray that we will press into God and release ourselves and our situation to Him. God is always faithful to deliver us in, through, and out of those storms.  He will bring us to equilibrium here on earth—and someday into perfect equilibrium with Jesus in heaven.

God bless you!
Chris Atkins