Lessons from Newton

So Immi got a newton's cradle for Christmas. On Boxing Day a friend put up a post on FB about her son's tangled Newtons cradle and I sat there with a mix of relief and smug that we hadn't faced that problem. Two days later that smug was wiped away as I found the Newton's cradle completely tangled up in her room. 

I angrily took it downstairs and started work on it - if my friend could fix theirs then I could fix ours - I worked on it for a long time, a bit obsessional really, I ate my dinner as intermittent mouthfuls between untangling. My husband came in periodically, initially to sympathise, eventually to try to rationalise but the untangling had taken on a deeper meaning for me by then. For I began to realise that it felt a bit like our life. 

 Everything had been going swimmingly, according to plan, just like the Newton's cradle, rocking gently sending its kinetic energy thought to the next thing, totally predictable, but along the line catastrophe struck. For the cradle, it was dropped and turned and got into a terrible tangle, for us it was Immi's health and the impact it had on our whole lives causing a change in country, work, home, schooling, etc. For many of you there will be some other turning in life that caused a wipeout that you have struggled to recover from.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Newtons_cradle.gif

I thought the Newtons cradle could be fixed but 5+ hours in, at midnight, with my eyes shot, I admitted defeat and went to bed (in tears if truth be known!) Murray had a look at it and took the strings off the frame where I found them in the morning when I went down. 

The truth is, in the natural, some things can't be fixed, some things have to be thought of and changed laterally. To find a different way, a new way, not the normal way. I wanted to go back, to retrace the tangled steps and untangle the wires, but it couldn't be done (and even if it had, where they were untangled they were all bent and crumpled). What needed to happen was a restoration, a renewing and recreating. 

It's like that when catastrophe strikes, when you get wiped out by life and its consequences continue on into the future. You can't retrace your steps, go back and unwind it. Instead, something new has to be created. I am stubborn - 5 hours of non stop pointless untangling kind of proves that point!  I would have probably continued today if he hadn't taken the wires off the frame, because it's just string, of course it can be untangled!! But thankfully someone else stepped in to stop my crazy! 

I spent a long time fighting the inevitable - that the cradle needed new wires, but I have also spent a long time trying to untangle and fix life when actually it needs a rethink, it needs a new way.  We need to find the new normal, the new way of working, ministering and being even though it's all a bit broken and tangled, and in that process maybe God will come along, rewire life, show a new way and create a new and beautiful thing.