SPIRALING UPWARD

Remember spiral notebooks? I don’t think I’ve used one in years. You? They used to be a huge part of my life during eighteen years of school and decades of study, meetings, and such. Well, I guess I can’t count the earliest elementary Big Chief years. I’m not sure what grade transition brought the spiral notebooks. All I know is that years ago, staring at the coiled spring binding my spiral notebook, I had an epiphany about history, life, and Bible prophecy. There is an axiom, “History repeats itself.” The validity of that statement was codified by Solomon three thousand years earlier. In his Ecclesiastes, he famously notes that “there is no new under thing the sun.” (Ecc 1:9). He declares this after having illustrated it with the endless cycle of one generation being replaced with a subsequent one, the sun’s daily rising and setting, the wind’s continual alternating blowing from one direction and then the opposite, and a water droplet’s cyclic journey from river to sea to sky to river and back to sea. Life is an endless cycle. Thus, history is an endless cycle. I agree, though my corroboration is not needed nor required to verify the popular adage and the Bible sage. History repeats itself. Life repeats itself. Each year, with each marker of seasons and annual events I find myself remarking, “Here we go again! We’ve just done this, celebrated this, seen this.” That history repeats itself has been in my thoughts a lot lately with the constant news of the recent massing of huge numbers of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border signaling Putin’s desired intention to invade. This impending threat is being met with our and other nations’ seeking to prevent him from doing so with placating diplomacy that is careful to avoid any mention of the use of force. When I first heard this news, as a reader of history, I immediately thought of the pre-WWII days when Germany began to mass its troops to invade Poland and the allied nations began to try to appease Hitler with placating diplomacy. I found myself saying, “Here we go again. History repeats itself.” It does. So does life. This is where the spiral notebook comes in. You may have done this. I did. If you were to begin at one end of the coil and begin to trace its first loop, your finger, obviously, would go in circles. If you kept tracing, your finger would go around and around and around. You would be repeating the same action—a circular one. Your finger, again and again, would trace the same path through space. It would keep ending in the same place it began. Wait. No, it wouldn’t. Though going in circles, your finger would NOT be ending in the same place. Yes, history repeats itself—but not like tracing the circumference of a ring, but like tracing a loop on the coil of a spiral notebook. If you trace the circumference of a ring, your finger truly does keep making cycles and ending up at the same place however many times you trace it. But, if you trace the loops of the coil of a spiral notebook, although you make circle after circle, cycle after cycle, your finger moves linearly through space. If you start at one end, after making each cycle, you end up 10 1/2” from where you started. With all the circular movement, your finger has moved linearly. You didn’t end up where you began. Such is true with history. For all history’s repeating itself, going in cycles, it is--from Judeo-Christian worldview--headed somewhere. For all of my life’s endless cycles, it is going somewhere. For all of God’s people’s constant, reoccurring trials, battles, we are headed somewhere. But this begs a question. If history, despite its repeating itself, is moving in a linear direction, who, what, is moving it? Who makes the repetitions like loops in the coil of the spiral? Or, whose finger is tracing the loops? Some say it is just the Darwinian force that moves history. Others, just time and chance. Others say it's greed, money. Others, the struggle between classes. Others, the evolution of thought, philosophy. Others, religion. Etc. We Christians believe it is God. God moves history. God is moving history to a determined end. God is in control. God is behind the scenes at work. He even breaks out from behind the scenes to intervene and involve Himself in history. As He did in the person of Jesus. As He does in miracles. God moves history, yet allows humans their free will which they often use in direct opposition to God. Yet, even their diametric choices God, in the larger scheme of things, moves towards the end He has purposed. God does not cause the evil, horrible things that result from human choice and action—like the holocaust. But God moves them in a direction of His perfect plan with a perfect ending. This reveals a conundrum: If God is in control of history, if God is moving history, why does it seem to be moving from bad to worse? Why does human existence seem rushing to cataclysmic destruction? Well, it is—and it isn’t. By any measure, by any honest observation, our world seems headed towards dreadful demolition by its own volition. There’s little cause to deny that. But despite that reality, it’s also true that God is moving this world towards a Kingdom of Peace, Righteousness, and Glory. He is moving this earth to a new one. He is moving man’s dystopic world to His utopian one. The same is true for each believer’s life. Whatever bad, hurtful, disappointing things occur in his cycles of life, God is moving that believer to a perfect outcome. Yes, despite its repeating itself, history--human history, my history, your history--is moving somewhere. Where to? Which direction? That depends on the status of one’s faith in God. One’s relationship with God determines which way along the coil one is moving. One’s faith in God determines one’s point of view. History is forever repeating itself. It is moving along the loops of the coil of the spiral notebook of reality. By all appearances, it appears that all is spiraling downward. Out of control. We know it’s not. It is spiraling upward. In God’s control. To a glorious future for those whose faith is in Him. --Pastor Clifford Hurst