Gravity!

As I grow older, I find I like to tell more and more stories.  And then repeat them!  It's one of the signs of becoming an Uncle :P  One of my favourite stories that I like to share with my younger colleagues is about self-awareness regarding the importance of your place in the world.

When I first started out in the workplace, my colleagues were all lawyers, my bosses were lawyers, the judges were lawyers and the opponents were lawyers.  I read all the news about lawyers, and I talked to my lawyer friends about the law all the time.  So I thought the world revolved around law and lawyers.

I was wrong of course.  When I left the Legal Service to join the financial sector, I quickly realised that the law is only a tiny, tiny, tiny part of this world.  I thought the world revolved around lawyers, but really, it is the lawyers who revolve around the world, and the law is just one small satellite.

With the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the pre-eminence of finance in the news, I thought the world revolved around the financial industry.  I was wrong again.  As I rotated roles, changed jobs, and met customers, I realised that finance is just a tiny, tiny, tiny part of this world.  I thought the world revolved around finance, but really, it is finance which revolves around the world.

I have found that this awareness of our little place in this world is a critical success factor.  It mitigates against the risk of failing to see the wood for the trees; it compels us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, and see things from their perspective; it keeps us humble, and punctures inflated self-importance.

Likewise, when we are on earth, we look up and see the tiny disc of the sun.  It seems that the sun goes round the earth.  We are the centre of the universe!  Everything revolves around us!  Our successes feel euphoric, and our problems look like mountains! But as Galileo discovered, it is the earth that rotates around the sun.

As the earth rotates around the sun, so we are also little satellites around God and His Creation.  We live as if God's awesome plan for Creation were built for our own little concerns.  I'll turn to God when I feel like it.  I'll serve Him when it's convenient.  I'll agree with Him when it accords with my own opinion.  God is just an idea, or a philosophy, to be entertained, or merely tolerated.  We live like God is this tiny disc that orbits around us, and not the other way round.

Yet all this time, God exerts a sort of vast gravity on us.  Deep in the silence of our hearts, we know.  Everyone of us yearns, for... something... to fill us.  We have an emptiness - inside - that is God-shaped.  When we wander away from our orbits around God, the Creator and the Source of Life, looking for fulfilment and meaning, we simply move further and further into nothingness, into dark, empty space.  But God calls to us, to come back into orbit.  It is the Gravity of God's love for us.  You can't see it, but it's there, and it's inexorable.

This Christmas season - Let. Gravity. Work!
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Christ that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5-6

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