Cartoon Physics

The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. Joshua 10:13

When I was in elementary school, I set out one recess to replicate Tarzan’s swinging from vine to vine. I tied my jump rope to the monkey bars overhead, climbed up one side and jumped, planning to grab the rope in midair to swing gracefully to the other side. I’d seen it in a cartoon and was utterly confident, never considering of the possibility of failure. I woke up on the ground, looking up at my mother (also a teacher), who hadn’t seen my fall and wondered why I was lying on the ground. Today, I’d have probably been sent to the ER for a head injury, but I was fine and soon found myself back in the classroom, pondering where I went wrong. Where I went wrong was that I tried to cheat gravity. Though it looked easy in the cartoon, that wasn’t real. In real life, I must obey the laws that govern the universe. I can try to fight gravity, but it’s going to hurt.

As amusing as that story may be, when I got older, I’m afraid I wasn’t much wiser. In my last relapse, I heard God imploring me not to take those pills. I did it anyway. I knew God would forgive me and I planned to simply return to sobriety the next day. That didn’t happen though. Once I defied God and took the pills, a bomb went off in my mind. This is fantastic. Why did I ever quit? I’m not stopping. A few months and a lot of pills later, my life came apart as I lost my job and nearly my family. I learned that just as I can’t defy gravity, I can’t defy God. I can try, but it’s going to hurt.

This is the lesson of today’s passage. In it, as Israel continued its conquest of the promised land, five kings joined forces, believing that together, they could defy God, defeating his people. Their efforts were futile as God threw them into a panic, dropped large stones from heaven, and even made the sun stand still as the Israelites completed their rout. Those five kings discovered that to oppose God is to fight the power that governs the universe. No matter how great their army was, it stood no chance challenging God.

This is an ongoing lesson of which I must daily remind myself. I still regularly have impulses to think, say, and do things that are in opposition to God’s will. In those moments, I must ask myself – Do I really want to oppose God? I must remind myself of the futility and misery of fighting God, and I must abandon my way to follow his. If I insist, I can attempt to defy God and gravity, but as I’ve learned, it’s going to hurt.