Life in the Face of Entropy

Entropy: lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. 

I’m thinking about painting this on the walls of my house: Entropy happens.  Emblazoned large, it will be the first thing I see when I come through the door, and it will serve as a helpful reminder for me any time I leave my house and come back to find things broken, the plumbing leaking, and things just not quite like I left them.  No reason to get upset or discouraged.  What did I expect?  Entropy happens—especially in this environment, with its dust, heat, and cheaply produced Chinese goods.

Perhaps at the hospital, I will just imagine that it has been graffitied all over the place.  Though, somehow it is a bit more distressing to see things slip into disorder in the work environment.  Systems we’ve set in place degraded and ground to a complete, non-functioning stop; shelves and cabinets we’ve carefully organized slipping into disheveled messes; teaching and training we’ve labored to give being first shortcut, then neglected, and now all but ignored.  Sometimes these things are due to neglect; other times it is the growing nature of our hospital that has rendered them obsolete.  Either way, entropy makes its mark.  How can I not get discouraged, as I see hours of work reduced to naught?  My carefully constructed house of cards flattened with a misdirected breath?

 In his book, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe tells the story of a Nigerian man at the turn of the twentieth century.  After an initial rise to power and prominence, things go from bad to worse for the protagonist.  Perhaps what this book does most accurately is to leave one with the sense of what it is to face entropy, to look on as things fall apart.  The feelings produced by Achebe’s tale are often repeated in this Africa life.

Things fall apart; entropy happens.

So it is little wonder that I kept thinking, “there has to be a catch here” as my friend Serge recounted how wonderfully his tailor’s shop was doing.  About a year prior, I had helped Serge invest in some sewing machines, some basic furniture, and 6 months’ rent for his shop.  The money was provided by my parent’s church, with the hope that it would help Serge and his family become financially stable and independent.

Serge teaches at a trade school (of which he is now the director) in the hope of giving people employment, especially young Christians who are being persecuted or rejected by their families because of their beliefs.  He was receiving no salary and only minimal support from a church in his native Niger, which frequently left him in need. 

When I left for furlough in late April, the six months’ rent was finished, and though he had several clients, I figured he would only JUST scrape through.  After my return I visited and was surprised to see the number of people working in the shop.  He had more work than he could handle, he told me.  He was looking into renting the shop next to him so that he could expand.  He had hired one full-time person and several other part-timers, and he was sub-contracting out work to some of his old students.

Serge wasn’t fixated on his monetary gain, though.  He was just happy to be more freed up to invest in the school.  Several times, he shook his head and repeated how good the Lord had been to him in the past year.  He asked me to be praying for his employees that didn’t know the Lord.  He’d been sharing the Gospel with them and one had recently asked for a Bible. 

I drove away rebuking my own cynicism. There was real life here, in a way that defied my expectation of entropy.  Indeed, things had NOT fallen apart.

My “there’s gotta be a catch here, the bottom falls out of this somewhere” reaction was repeated over the next couple weeks as I met with a few, new believing friends.  In each case, I was repeatedly amazed by the growth in their walk with the Lord.  They had deeper understanding of the Lord’s Word, they were praying for more than just themselves, and they had greater appreciation for relationship over laws.  There was life here!

Things fall apart; but life grows.

As I learn to depend more on the Holy Spirit in my life and ministry, I’m beginning to appreciate the power of this life that He brings.  In the face of all odds, against every trend and norm, He is capable of bringing about growth.  Life can be trusted to move forward; that is, by definition what LIFE does.  So perhaps instead of trying harder in the face of entropy, I will just focus on planting and cultivating life, pointing people to its source and asking them to drink it in deeply.