I like to go to Hobby Lobby to destress. I’ve had a difficult life in many ways and I have a chronic illness. With the help of supplements and doctors I’ve gotten out of terrible suffering and I’m a lot better, but life still isn’t easy for me. I’ve joked that if I’ve used all my supplements and treatments and they still aren’t enough to boost my mood up to normal, Hobby Lobby will do the trick and get the job done. It is a fun store to be in. Looking at all the crafts boosts dopamine and acetylcholine and gets me thinking creatively, causing me to forget my troubles for the time being. The atmosphere there is really nice because they play hymns and Christian music. The music is usually free of rock drums, and doesn’t stir up the fight-or-flight response that activates the primitive part of the brain. Instead the songs are usually piano hymns, played in rhythms that activate the higher parts of the brain and the higher thoughts about holiness and love for God and man. I’ve noticed my thoughts are completely different at Hobby Lobby than they are at the mall. At the mall they play 70s love songs and as a single person I feel lonely and there’s a temptation to lament the lack of romance in my life and idolize a relationship, a temptation that doesn’t happen at Hobby Lobby.
Hobby Lobby is a great place to go for contemplation and to spend time emotionally and logically processing an earlier Bible study. It’s necessary to have time for reflection and as a Christian this is a big value of mine since the Bible values it so highly. It’s a health issue. It’s just impossible to be living in a healthy way if one doesn’t take time for reflection and communion with God, and this is one of the main health-destroying problems in our culture in America – we just don’t take time for reflection and prayer and deep thinking; we go, go, go. Overworking is actually a value and is seen as a virtue to us. I’m making a point of living counter-culturally in this important way. The fact I have a disability and can’t work makes this very doable for me. There are negatives to being disabled, and it’s not actually healthy to not be able to work, as health is achieved when there’s a balance of working, reflecting, and socializing, but I’ve been thankful to God for all the time I’ve been able to spend in communion with Him, and this has been one of the biggest positives of my illness.
Recently I spent an hour or so at Hobby Lobby. I loved a craft/machine that involved constructing wind machines. You could rearrange the parts they provided in the kit and create 6-8 different wind-powered machines. It looked really fun. I would like to build the adult equivalent of these things and make real wind-powered machines. We live near Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and I’m always thinking about how I would love to study there and learn engineering. I’m not naturally good at it, but I’ve decided that doesn’t matter and that science is for everyone. God made every aspect of the world for all His children, as each part of the world tells us something about Himself, and He wants me to delve into each field, at least intellectually in my studies. At some point I’m going to get into designing and creating something like these wind machines.
At Hobby Lobby they also had astronaut food. Together these two things got my mind thinking about the laws of physics that God created that propel the wind-machines forward on earth and that allow for a spacecraft to sail through space.
These laws are the same. But space creates different conditions. The difference in conditions vastly alters how the laws express themselves, and what is needed in order to create conditions for a person to live and breath in that environment. But the laws themselves are the same, constant, reliable, consistent.
I began to think about what the difference in conditions meant and what truths it brings out, about science, but more importantly about God Himself. By having two vastly different conditions, this shows us the laws are in effect everywhere, and that they can work everywhere. They aren’t only possible on earth with our specific conditions. Having only two different examples is enough to show these laws aren’t limited to earth and can work under other conditions. It also shows us that the laws work in different conditions and environments. They are not nonsensical; they are reliable and logical and real, and adjusting for the change in conditions, we can use these same laws to live and move in space and with low levels of gravity.
Space is a harsh environment. It’s hard to get a man or woman into space and give them what they need to live there for a while. It takes courage, it takes skill and knowledge of science, it takes ingenuity, and you have to be hardy. It’s a very different environment from earth where all these things come much easier.
I then began to cry. I realized that the character of God is like His laws, constant, never-changing, faithful, always the same. It was the same before sin in a perfect environment, as it is now, in harsher conditions. God loved us enough to die for us then, but no sin necessitated His death on our behalf. This love was expressed only in a perfect environment, and the fullness of His love was really a mystery known only to God Himself. There was no need for grace and mercy, and thus the depth of His love, though present in His heart, was not fully known to angels or his other created “sons” like humanity.
Then when sin entered the picture this same love and goodness that God possessed from eternity expressed itself under different conditions. Hostile ones this time, with a proud and evil enemy who desired only power and tyranny, with sinners who were enemies with God and joined forces with this enemy. What did God do? He expressed this same love in a way that met the need of these new conditions. He gave His own life to pay the debt penalty for these enemies of God and make redemption possible. He revealed the self-sacrificial component of His nature, under conditions where want was possible and where self-sacrifice could be played out. In heaven everything was perfect and neither God nor angels had any unmet needs. There was no want, no need to lay down one’s life to fight evil as evil did not yet exist.
Once sin entered the picture, this second reality under different conditions is needed in order to prove that God is constant, and that His character of love is not faulty, but operates the same way in perfect circumstances as it does in a sinful world, under pressure, under want. Jesus under want gave of Himself. He didn’t self-serve, or hoard life for Himself. He willingly gave it to redeem sinners.
It takes this second condition of things in order to prove the immutability of God’s moral law, just as it takes the conditions of space to prove the laws of physics found on earth exist in a universal way, and a constant way.
Once God proves Himself holy and good under the conditions of life in a sinful world, sin is defeated for all time. What a wonder. How amazing this all is!
I then thought of the dark times in my life I don’t understand. The times I’ve been in psychosis. The times I wonder why and it’s just a blank. The things beyond my human understanding. The struggle against Satan’s lies that are very painful and paint God in the worst pictures. And I realized our faithfulness under uncertainty and in these harsh conditions causes God’s law to manifest and be represented by us in a different way than the angels. We must have faith under privation and pressure and the temptation of our fallen nature, and the weakness of our fallen nature. We express God’s law in our character under different circumstances than the angels, but it’s the same law, the same character, though we must overcome the sin in our nature and develop this character. Like the angels we give God glory, but we do so in a hostile world. This shows God’s law can work and bless even under such conditions, and that it is as wonderful and good in a world without sin as it is in a fallen world with an evil foe.
Angels prove the righteousness and goodness of God’s law by the way it blesses them when they keep it. This shows the goodness of God too towards them. But man proves the righteousness and goodness of God by how God gives us grace and mercy and helps us overcome sin. Angels do not have sin in their character that they need to overcome. Man shows the efficacy of the cross, the power of God not only to keep from sin as He does the angels, but to renew the image of God in a fallen character, to redeem and restore.