“I sought a personal entropy, hedged my bets that the world would break and remake me along with itself. I wanted to break, you see. And sometimes I still do.”
It’s tough to imagine – the idea that someone would ever really want to break – but as I gaze back into the deepest depths of my sorrow, I realize it was true for me. And actually, it still is.
Yeah, sometimes I still want to break.
If you can relate to that feeling, either in your present tribulation or in a past experience, I have good news for you: God loves to use broken things. If you’re hurting, or lost, or lonely, or feel damaged beyond repair, please keep reading.
Because trust me, my friend – your story is nowhere near over.
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The word entropy has a number of definitions, most of them immensely complex and scientific. But there’s one I really like, one that works particularly well for our purposes:
“The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition).
In other words, ‘entropy’ is what we named our universe’s nasty habit of dissolving into disarray. It basically means that chaos is not only inevitable, it’s natural.
Now, imagine your heart is the universe.
The same governing principle applies: in this life, chaos is inevitable. You can try to resist the entropy inside yourself, but take it from someone who knows – if you want to rise out of the ashes, you must first become the ashes. You have to embrace the madness.
To quote the band NEEDTOBREATHE and their song, Hard Love: “You gotta burn your old self away.” Which, if you’ll recall, sounds an awful lot like what Christina Rasmussen was talking about in my last post, The Empty Theater.
I won’t lie to you – entropy hurts.
But here comes the beautiful part.
Your willingness to break makes you useful to God. For Him, pain is construction material. Every tragedy is merely a canvas upon which a miracle can be painted. Does that take away the pain? Absolutely not. Will it bring my wife back? No, it will not. Does it make me happy that something horrible happened to me? Not even a little bit. But it does make me thankful.
It makes me thankful that I serve a God who would never waste my agony, but rather, a God who can (and will) transform my earthly despair into something heavenly.
God knew about entropy long before we gave it a name. Which is why He created eucatastrophe.
Formally coined by J.R.R. Tolkien in his 1947 essay, On Fairy-Stories, eucatastrophe literally translates to “good catastrophe.” But in Tolkien’s explanation, a more appropriate definition would be, “an abrupt or unexpected plot twist that leads to a positive or peaceful resolution for the protagonist.” If you’ve read or watched Tolkien’s great epic, The Lord of the Rings, you’re already well-acquainted with the concept.
Eucatastrophe is the antithesis of entropy. While entropy is natural, eucatastrophe is supernatural. Entropy governs us, but God governs entropy, and God just happens to be a specialist when it comes to “good” catastrophes.
In Even if you don’t, I write these words:
“Kailen’s testimony was changing the world. People saw this beautiful young woman suffering and dying in the prime of her life and thought what a shame it was, what a horrible God-forsaken situation.
Then they read the blog or heard her speak.
The message they heard was not “woe is me” but rather “how Great is my God.” They listened to her inexplicably praise Jesus in the midst of terrible suffering.
There’s no question Kailen changed the world, but she did it one person at a time. For her, every pain and every loss created an opportunity. She had what J.R.R. Tolkien might call eucatastrophic perspective.
The same is true for you, my fellow griever. Your pain is real, your grief is legitimate and warranted, but your loss isn’t terminal. Your brokenness isn’t irreparable. And your entropy doesn’t get the final say.
So, choose to be the canvas upon which the miracle is painted. Let God use the ashes of your life to build something beautiful, something that will change the world – one person at a time. For if you press on, if you maintain eucatastrophic perspective, if you allow the author of your story to transform your earthly despair into something heavenly, it might be that Tolkien was onto something…
It might be that your unexpected plot twist is waiting just around the bend, and it will peacefully lead you home.
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