Resonance

The Geometry of Obviousness

“How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” asked Éomer.

“As he ever has judged,” said Aragorn. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

Some Things Never Change

Men carry an old instinct: the sense that reality speaks in repetitions.

A thing that happens once might be noise. A thing that happens twice begins to clarify. A thing that keeps happening—especially when you wish it wouldn’t—is no longer random.

Men understand this without effort. Patterns need no credentials. Cycles need no permission. The world repeats.

Because God Ordained It that Way

When you stop pretending randomness is in control, when you stare into the stormy chaos and remember that it is God in the storm, when you choose to believe that even the Accuser is no more than “God’s Devil,” a precious and holy clarity dawns.

Pay attention. Write it down. Check in twice, and then check it again a few weeks later. Tone down the noise. Stop consuming and start producing. Learn to remember what the modern haste forgot, and you will see that some reactions are not anyone’s decisions at all. They’re just what humans always do whenever the same pressures come to land.

You Can’t Control the Feelings of Others

But you can start to learn how they always react.

Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is. … You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?

The fool always responds like a fool (see Proverbs 26), and the lazy man always acts like a lazy man. (Same chapter.) So, too, the Talebearer, the Scoffer and, to quote our Lord, the Hypocrite.

Brood of Blind Guides

It doesn’t matter how much you change. Some habits bear the same results. None of us possess flesh that likes to be wrong. None of us naturally want justification to come from outside of ourselves. All of us want all men to speak well of us, our money to flow like precious spice, and our name to be worth its salt.

None of us like shame, enjoy turning the other cheek or want to be called out for being wrong.

This is not a complicated analysis. This is concupiscence. This is original sin.

This is Who We Are

By nature.

X leads to Y.

Every time

The best a sinner can do is stop arguing with geometry and accept that triangulation is simply a matter of course.

So use a compass. Come to terms. Coin your heart and mind upon the Rock that does not shift, even while the sandy lands are washed away in the storm that no man can face alone.

Build Your House on Jesus

Pattern-recognition always comforts men. That’s why they study history. That’s why they memorize sports scores and play draft football. That’s why they sweat pipe, shoot targets and mow the lawn the same way every time.

Observing the weather takes no emotional vocabulary. It demands no psychological contortion. It requires only honest eyes and ears.

“This happened last time. That means this will probably happen again.”

But in an Age of TechnoBabel Gaslight

It takes courage to admit what many obvious things mean.

“What is a woman?” “When does life begin?” “Does ‘day’ really mean ‘day’?”

It takes courage. But it’s a fact: name the repetition and you will see where the line goes.

The moment a man names the repetition, he begins to see where the line goes. He is not predicting the future; he is following a straight path from cause to consequence.

If a man never speaks what he thinks, resentment gathers in his heart like stormwater behind a closed gate. If he ignores his stress, it doesn’t disappear—it multiplies and returns with interest—that’s “snakebite” in Hebrew.

Avoid conflict as a rule, and life shrinks into the fear of discomfort. Seal every window against the wind, and slowly you suffocate in your own exhaust. Sheathe the blade against shadows, and eventually forget you that you were made to stand in the Light.

None of this is mystery. None of this is fate. It is simply the harvest of bad habits—patterns left unattended, houses not swept clean.

Perspicuity

Because natural revelation teaches this. Scripture teaches it even more clearly. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of Christ—the Spirit of God speaks only One Way.

The path of the fool is crooked. The highway of the just is straight.

Straight is predictable. Crooked is queer, and queer eventually breaks.

The roadmap of the Bible does not lie. Like silver, purified in the furnace seven times, life is filled with God’s resonance.

The world is not chaos. Cycles are not accidents.

Nothing Ever Actually Goes Wrong

Repeat that revelation to yourself. Often.

We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Accept this and you will see life differently. Pay attention to your body instead of judging it. Observe what keeps showing up instead of dismissing it. Stop pretending that you can change the things that keep on happening.

Predictable outcomes are not surprises. Frustrations are often the result of lying to yourself about what you already know but refuse to admit.

The real answers are usually simple. Making things better doesn’t take a grand change. It needs only a shift in perspective.

Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.

The ear that hears the rebukes of life will abide among the wise. He who disdains instruction despises his own soul, but he who heeds rebuke gets understanding.Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Clarity breeds courage. Courage breaks inertia. Inertia, once broken, becomes momentum.

Resonance is a Fancy Word for “Common Sense”

There is a straight line between good and evil.

God’s wisdom holds the world together just as it ever has. Your life straightens the moment you stop fighting the obvious. And once you stop drifting and start discerning—as Aragorn said—you will see that things are the same as they have ever been.

Simple Enough

1. Pay Attention to the Bible.

2. Pay attention to what your body does.

3. Pay attention to what keeps happening.

4. Stop pretending the patterns are accidents.

You are not cursed. You are not doomed. You are not confused.

You are listening to the wrong advice. So…

5. Act on the truth you’ve been ignoring.

And see that even the patterns of error are not your enemies.

They are your teachers.

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