Today’s science lesson, from one of the most unscientific souls you’ll ever meet, is about momentum. Real scientists will tell you that momentum involves complicated concepts like mass, velocity, vector sums and the like.
My definition of momentum, of course, is a bit easier to grasp: a fickle force that is impossible to predict, hard to control, and utterly exasperating when it’s going the wrong way.
Let me illustrate this by relating a disconcerting experience I had with momentum years ago. It involved pantyhose.
At the church we were attending at that time, dresses and pantyhose were standard attire for ladies. Pantyhose and I have never gotten along, but never was our relationship more dicey than in my ninth month of pregnancy. I’m not sure that even the great Houdini could have easily wriggled himself into a pair of pantyhose had his belly been as big as mine was. My oldest son weighed nearly 11 pounds and by that ninth month of pregnancy, I looked like I was ready to birth a full-grown hippopotamus.
As I stood in the choir loft one Sunday morning, my abundant girth draped in a choir robe, I began to feel the top of my pantyhose rolling ever so slowly over the crest of my humongous belly. It was a distressing sensation, to say the least.
I knew that those pantyhose would soon hit the downhill slope and I feared where momentum might carry them after that. I imagined them rolling on down to my ankles, forcing me to hobble out of the choir loft like a prisoner in shackles.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but by the sixth verse of the invitation hymn, my pantyhose were ridin’ mighty low.
It’s scary when you realize that momentum is taking you someplace you don’t want to go.
Every sports fan understands this and knows that “Lady Mo” can indeed be cruel.
Countless times I’ve reveled as my beloved Auburn Tigers seemed to be rolling to an easy football victory, only to helplessly watch them go belly up in the second half. My tennis career is littered with bad memories of times I snatched defeat from the jaws of almost certain victory.
It seems there’s almost no such thing as a sure thing in sports … or in life, especially during these times of economic and moral craziness.
It often feels like “Lady Mo” is sweeping this world toward doom and destruction at breakneck speed, and in some respects, that might be an accurate observation.
The Bible doesn’t mince words about our times, describing the “last days” as a time when “men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).
Sounds pretty hopeless, doesn’t it?
Ah, but wait – it’s not. A momentum shift of epic proportions will occur and a comeback is a sure thing for those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ.
Things may seem dismal right now, but only the end matters, and in the end, Jesus wins. Just like He won two thousand years ago when all the powers of hell converged to try to keep Him in that tomb. Jesus will put an eternal whoopin’ on His enemies again, and when He does, those who love Him will win, too.
Lady Mo is shifting; rejoice and hang on for the ride.