No Coincidences

Tag: universe

  • The Refiner’s Fire

    The Refiner’s Fire

    *I wrote this in March of 2022.

    One of Newton’s Laws of Motion states “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

    In life, for every sorrow, there is equal and opposite capacity for joy. For all our abilities to cause pain and suffering, there is an equal and opposite capacity in us to provide joy and comfort to others.

    This brings up a thought: Without sorrow in general, we would lose the ability to provide an equal and opposite amount of joy. If there were no sorrow in the world, we couldn’t equally counter it with joy. This puts sorrow in a somewhat different light.

    Without our personal sorrows, we could not help others through their personal sorrows. This is why, among infinite other reasons, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was so significant. He knows all the sorrow. He has experienced it. He can help us through all our sorrows.

    For some reason this week I’ve been studying Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The followoing thoughts and things I’m going to write probably won’t make sense. Scientifically, what I’m about to write may be nonsense. But they mean something to me, so I will try to elaborate.

    I read that Einstein came up with one of his theories when he was looking out a window at someone on a ladder. He wondered what would happen if that person fell off the ladder?

    While watching the short video The Refiner’s Fire, Ivy was in my lap. I was in a rocking chair. She was watching with me. I rocked while I held the phone, and we watched the video. My elbow was propped on the chair so as the chair moved, my body moved, and the phone moved. I wondered if Ivy was having to keep up with the phone, trying to trace it as it moved. I realized, probably not. Like me, she was moving with the chair that moved the phone. She was lying flat against my chest so as I moved, she moved, and the phone stayed right in her field of vision, in her eyes to see.

    Then, near the end of the video, Ivy, as toddlers are known to do, got impatient and sat up in my lap. Now she wasn’t flush with my chest. As I rocked and tried to hold the phone steady, she rocked back and forth, tossed about by the flow of the chair but no longer in sync with me in any way. In addition, I had to move the phone farther away, one to try to keep it steady, and two to keep Ivy from grabbing it.

    As I’ve studied Einstein’s theories I’ve been struck by the religious implications. Spacetime bends around the object with the most mass. That object pulls all smaller objects to it. They are drawn to it. Time and space literally bend to the will of the biggest object.

    God is our biggest object. He is the biggest object of the universe. He is, literally, a celestial body of such force that from many lightyears away our sun, our planet, and we are drawn to Him. He is the force that keeps us moving. He is the force that keeps us living.

    As I rocked in this chair, I realized the chair was God. He was the force I was rocking with. And as I was rocking with Him, it was easy to focus on whatever I needed to focus on. If I was flush with Him and in sync with Him, I could focus on that video easily as it rocked with Him. Ivy also, as she stayed flush with me, could focus on the bigger picture – represented by that video. But as she was dependent on me (flush with my body which was flush with the chair – remember God is the chair), when she lifted off me, it made it harder for her to see the picture. She’d disconnected from me and therefore disconnected with God. In addition, if I raised myself from the chair, I disconnected us both from the chair, from God, and we both lost the vision. We both got distracted, we both couldn’t follow the video, we both got tossed about by the swinging momentum, trying to stay flush with the chair (God) but having disconnected ourselves from Him.

    What does this teach me?

    1. In this moment, it is profoundly important for me to stay flush with God.  Ivy (and now Sage) are relying on me.
    2. It is profoundly important for me to teach Ivy, Sage, and our future daughter to become flush with God themselves, so they don’t need to rely on me. What happens when I’m not here?

    How does this tie into The Refiner’s Fire video that started this thought?

    We can create joy to counter sorrow. It is up to me to stay flush with God so that when Ivy, Sage, and my future daughter go through their refiner’s fires, they have somebody they can completely trust. In my life I have a great capacity to cause joy or sorrow. I think the greatest joy I can create in my daughters’ lives is teaching them that God loves them, they are His, He is watching them, and no matter what happens in their life, He will always be there for them. If I don’t teach this to my daughters, it would result in a great sorrow.

    Ivy, Sage, and future daughter will go through their refiner’s fires just as I did. They will need God in their lives at that time. We all need God as we go through the refiner’s fire. Then, when we come out properly molded, we can be flush with the chair (God) and help others as they stay flush with us, until they, themselves, can connect themselves to God. 

    It is our greatest responsibility, and the greatest joy we can provide, to teach others that God loves them. They are children of God with a divine inheritance. No matter what happens to them in this life, He is always there, and it will be okay in the end.

  • Stop and Stare at Airplanes

    Stop and Stare at Airplanes

    You know the saying, “Stop and smell the roses”? Of course you do. Everyone knows that saying.

    I’m not saying we need to get rid of that saying, it serves its purpose in its universality. But I ask, who is stopping to smell roses? Even if they are enjoying their surroundings and the moments of life, I don’t know of people stopping to smell roses.

    I’m sure there are people out there smelling roses, maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know any of them.

    I propose we update this saying.

    When is the last time an airplane flew over your head and you stopped to stare at it?

    I’ve tried to make this a habit recently and I advise you to do the same. I think it will change your life. No hyperbole in that statement.

    Humans used to be able to look at the stars and feel how vast the universe is and how small we are in it. If you live in a big city, like many of us do, you can’t do that anymore. There are no stars to view at night. How do we get that feeling? How do we regain that awe-like feeling of the vastness and amazingness of the universe?

    In a different way, you can look at an airplane flying through the sky and think about how amazing the world we live in is. You will look at cars differently, sidewalk lights differently, and handrails differently. All the things we take for granted become amazing when you stop and think about it.

    Stop and stare at an airplane.

    Consider that tube of metal hurtling through the air at un-thinkable speeds, with humans inside, traveling thousands of miles in the matter of hours. Think about the world we live in.

    It’s amazing.

    It’s a miracle.

    It’s a gift.

    Stop and stare at airplanes.

  • Gravity of God

    Gravity of God

    The push and pull of all things.

    Here’s another one of those thought experiments I’ve talked about before. Let’s see where this goes. Work with me.

    Earth’s gravity pulls us down, we push back on Earth, but Earth doesn’t feel us because we’re so small and insignificant.

    God is the gravity of our universe. The magnitude of His pull is so great that He is the force that keeps us in balance, connected to His gravity, two feet stable on the ground.

    My mind is having trouble wrapping itself fully around the concept I’m trying to describe, so bear with me.

    Visions of Glory talks about the impact of every single moment in our lives. When we do something, it ripples all around us. No action we ever take does not impact something or someone in some way. Everything. The smallest moments and the largest decisions. They all ripple through time and have such an impact.

    I believe this to be true.

    I’ve long tried to understand how God’s omniscience and our free will coexist. I know (or hope) this is something I’ll learn when I die. But for now, my mortal mind is working through this understanding. It’s been proposed that God is a great mathematician who quantifies the likelihood of every person in the world’s choices and comes to an approximation of what will happen in the future. That seems too simple…and seems to have some holes in it. Again, to me, in my simple mind.

    What I’m thinking with gravity and pull is this –

    God is the pull on all of us. He keeps us in balance, as already stated.

    We have pull on other things around us as well. As I mentioned, our choices have impacts on others. Now, it’s not our gravity, like God’s, that impacts others. We’re not celestial beings like God – yet.  But our choices, our actions, our thoughts do impact and change our surroundings and those around us.

    So God’s gravity pulls all of us. We pull others with our actions.

    I wonder, and I think I’m starting to believe, that there is a great cosmic physics happening. God is the center, the everything, the force that keeps us in motion. We make choices that impact others. In a way, we’re being trained to be like God, to have an impact, to have a force.

    Since God is the center, the everything, He sees our actions and how they will ripple, since they all report back to Him. He is our gravity. So as we ripple, He is the center, and He sees the all. Since He is our force, and we move around Him, He can sense it all, past, present, and future.

    Now, as I write this, I again am struck by the simplicity of my mind and how short I am falling in describing what I’m trying to describe. It’s like describing the color blue. I can feel what I’m trying to say, but I just can’t put it into words.

    Anyways, there’s the Physics lesson for the day. I know it’s a bit rambling and I’m not positive it makes sense. Thanks for reading.

  • Speed of God

    Speed of God

    I recently read a book called ­Project Hail Mary. It’s by the same guy who wrote The Martian. This book has the space travel and physics concept of time dilation involved. I’m an ignoramus when it comes to the physics of this so I’m not going to say anything smart here. Time dilation is the idea that if you’re moving at a fast enough speed, you will age slower than someone moving at a normal or slower speed. See a movie like Interstellar for example. This is related to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

    To think about someone moving at a speed that makes them age slower than others – time dilation – is a beyond complext concept. The book had a comment like, “I’m glad the universe thought to have time slow down as you approached the speed of light.” That made me think, it’s amazing the universe is like this.

    Before I continue, I just wanted to share, this is the beginnings of a thought on how the physics of this complex phenomena might explain something about God, our relationship to Him, and our position to Him in the cosmos. In doing this, because I’m so ignorant on the topic and don’t fully understand it, I’m sure I’ll get something wrong that someone who better understands the science of this topic can point out. That’s fine. I take comfort in the fact that the people out there that adequately understand this concept are roughly 1 per 1 billion so probably unlikely to read my blog.

    This is more a mental exercise for myself.

    So… the faster you move, the slower you age. What is age for us? It is our mind and bodies degrading.

    God is the center of the universe. We all revolve around God. As we move closer to God, we move closer to the center.

    I’ve written about God and time before, here for example.

    Time is definitely different and potentially nonexistent for God. We talk about 1000 years for us being a day for God, in a way for us to try to understand God’s “time” (see Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8, and especially D&C 130:4-11).

    God is light. God is in the center. So that would be why 1000 years for us is like a day for God. Time moves slower for Him because He’s at the center. Of course, God doesn’t age, He has a resurrected, perfected, and celestial body, but time moves slower for Him because He moves infinitely faster than the speed of light. He moves at the speed of everything – past, present, and future.

    So at a higher speed or revolution, less time is experienced. God’s mind, power, and faith move at a rate impossible for us to comprehend. Maybe that’s what makes Him in everything, alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. His higher speed puts Him on a higher plane. If we come closer to God, we would have to come closer to His speed and His plane, His level. If we do that, then time would slow down for us. We would be able to comprehend more. We would “age” slower. We would become like Him.

    By the way, this sent me down a wormhole (pun intended) of Youtube videos on time dilation, wormholes, the general theory of relativity, “nothing,” the twin paradox, space, and a plethora of other topics. This all led me to believe, while I can’t properly put into words my exact theory, that there is something to the above. There is something to God being the center. There is something to Christ being “light” which we know we can’t, in this life, move at the speed of. There is something to this physics and God thing. That makes sense given that God would be the master physicist as the Creator of the Universe.

    I’ll leave these musing at this point. Basically, long story short, there is something to God being on Kolob and us and our solar system revolving around Him. More on this as I explore this thought more.

  • You are Loved, You are Worthy

    You are Loved, You are Worthy

    “When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.”

    Think about that statement for a moment. 

    I heard this quote in a recent meditation I did.  The meditation guided this visual exercise:  Picture yourself as a child, truly picture it.  Picture yourself as a baby.  Picture yourself on someone’s lap.  Picture yourself being held, comforted, and played with.  Picture yourself laughing joyfully as someone makes a funny face at you.  Picture yourself young and innocent. 

    You don’t have to earn worthiness; you don’t have to earn love.  You are loved because you are.

    The next time you don’t feel worthy, picture yourself as a child.  You are worthy.

    This exercise led me to an even more powerful thought.  One that speaks not only to our worthiness here, but to our birthright and our eternal potential. 

    Consider Adam for a moment, the first man. When he came to this earth, we are told he was as a child. Adam came to earth meek and humble, a child-like individual. He had forgotten who he was. Who he was in reality was Michael the archangel, the chief angel. Adam was Michael, the angel second in authority. His authority was only exceeded by Jesus Christ Himself (and God, of course). In Hebrew the name Michael means “Who is like God.” This Michael came to earth with his mind wiped clean, with no recollection of his prior authority, no memory of his prior self.

    What about us?  What don’t we remember about ourselves?

    The next time you are insecure, unsure, or afraid, remember that you are a child of divine inheritance.  You are a prince or princess of the most High God.  Consider that for a moment.

    Not only are you loved and worthy of love, you are loved by the God of the universe.  You are in line to inherit all He has to offer (D&C 84:38).  Remember that, and don’t forget it.  Hold to it.

    We are as children here.  We don’t remember our past.  For all we know, we were spiritual giants.  We are spiritual giants.  We can be spiritual giants.  Embrace that identity.  Remember who you might be.  Remember who it is you have been tutored by.  The God of Heaven and Earth.  When we embrace this way of thinking and embrace this possibility, the difficult things of this earth become so inconsequential.  Our true potential is greatness.  May we never forget it.