Things That Don’t Exist but We Still Name: A Vacuum

 

The vacuum. It’s that little area of nothing once we pump out all the air. We can measure it as a drop in air pressure, but like the other things we have visited, it’s a name for something that is essentially, nothing. The idea of a vacuum has been controversial since Aristotle’s days. To be clear, I mean the actual “lack of matter” vacuum. (This is not to to be confused with the commonly used short name of the vacuum cleaner, a vacuum.) Oxford defines a vacuum as a space entirely devoid of matter. Aristotle was quoted as saying “Nature abhors a vacuum”. This thinking was agreeable to the religious leaders because they said, Since God is everywhere, it made sense. Torricelli was proposing that a vacuum was devoid of matter. This idea did bothered most the church leaders at the time, but Torricelli did his best to walk carefully around them instead of challenging them, unlike his mentor Galileo. Galileo had just dropped the bomb of “the Earth was not the center of the universe because it orbits the Sun and used it to challenge the Church’s authority. Torricelli did end up in hot water at times, but it usually wasn’t about his science.

Torricelli’s experiment used a glass tube filled with mercury inverted in another pool of mercury. When inverted, the weight of the mercury was pulled down by gravity and created an empty space at the top. It was the first attempt at showing air pressure or the “principle of the barometer” . He didn’t really do much else with it, although he did make some important advancements in calculus. Later, Blaise Pascal would do more experiments at different levels, ocean, mountains, and in between, to help advance the use of the barometer.

Yet another piece of nothingness that impacts our lives on a daily basis, even though it doesn’t exit. You don’t even have to understand it, just let it do its work.

Here is a short video to help explain the science.

Things that Don’t Exist but We Still Name: Holes

 

This week I thought I would continue the investigation into things we name that don’t exist. I this installment we investigate holes. Oxford Dictionary defines a hole as a hollow place in a solid body or surface. Holes are virtually everywhere. We see them in walls and ceilings. We often get holes in out roads. While I am aggravated when I put a hole in my jeans, others buy their jeans with ready-made holes fresh from the factory. Holes can be figurative, like “a hole in my heart” or “there’s a hole in your argument”. They are all around us, staring at us, mocking us, daring us to fill them. And we do. No one like a pothole in the road. We patch the tiny holes in our walls before we paint. We fill in holes in our yards. Take just 5 minutes and count every hole you see. The result will be surprising.

And yet, they really exist of NOTHING. The whole idea of a hole is that something is missing. We have named another nothing.

Oddly enough, life would be terrible without them. Try sewing on a button with no holes. Our houses would be unusable without entry holes. We wouldn’t have sports like basketball, golf or corn hole without them. Even our bodies have necessary holes. Imagine breathing without nose or mouth holes. Seems like a large problem. Our ear canals are holes. Without them we would be almost totally deaf. We use them for drains and the inside of pipes. It’s what makes our bread airy and light. And donuts? What would they be without the hole? Yes, a roll.

We were created with a virtual hole in our souls. Mankind has spent billions of dollars and countless hours searching for something to fill it. Yet it is a God shaped hole. Money, things, friends, or activities may fill it temporarily, but in the end, it’s still meant for God to fill. Blaise Pascal has been quoted as saying “There is a God–shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”  Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end". Now that’s one hole I’m glad to have.  The real question is, is HE in You?

 

Things that Don’t Exist but We Still Name: Shadows

Humans are interesting creatures.  We want to make sense of the world around us. We want to fell in Control. Ones of the strange things we do is naming things that don’t really exist. One of these is the shadow.

Shadows play a huge part in our daily life. They follow us around. They can help us tell time. They grow and shrink throughout the day. We use them to add dimension and depth to pictures and art.  The exit in our movies and our mythology. Most interestingly of all, we often fear them.

Shadows are mysterious. They represent the unknown. They are the hiding place of villains, monsters, and evil of all kinds. Do you remember, as a child, that closet in your room that would always create shadows that would inevitably turn into monsters? Oh come on. It wasn’t just me. According to Google AI, The global children's night light business (a segment of the broader night light market) is estimated to be worth approximately USD 1.5 billion annually as of 2024, and is projected to grow to USD 2.8 billion by 2031. That’s some serious night lighting! And Why? Because on a dark and stormy night, our imagination can turn them into almost anything.

Yet scientifically, a shadow is not really a thing. It has no substance, no merit on its own. It may, at times, hide nefarious things, but on its own it is nothing. Shadow is merely the absence of light. Shine a light on a shadow, and it disappears. A shadow cast on your hand or arm is imperceptible. You might notice a change in heat in sunlight, but that again is the lack of sunlight not the effect of shadow.

The Bible calls death a shadow. Psalm 23:4 says, Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  The King James Version says the “shadow of death”. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung has been quoted as saying, The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. We see this in the fight between good and evil. Where the light of God shines, the forces of evil work the hardest. Praise God, darkness itself cannot hurt us, because God is always with us. Remember what the scripture says? God is light, and in Him is no darkness. John 1:5

Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light. Leonardo da Vinci

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. Walt Whitman

Go, and live in the Light!

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 5:7 NIV

Repetition

 

One of my hardest tasks while trying to continue to keep up my weekly blog is trying to find new ideas. At my age and experience I have lots of stories and sometimes find myself repeating myself.  It’s not uncommon actually. Redo’s, reboots, and remakes are very common. Think about it. When is the last time you have seen an original movie or story? Still, it isn’t all bad. There are several good things that can happen when we review or retell a story.

 New Information - As a young man I learned not to remind my parents or grandparents that they had already told that story before. Firstly, it’s just kind of rude. Secondly, I found that each time new facts seemed to show. This helped add the story, often important things.

 As A Reminder - Let’s face it. We need reminding. Why do pastors repeat sermons & Bible stories? Because we need reminding. Poetry often has repeating lines for emphasis. The poem from Robert Frost is a good example.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

 Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Source: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (Library of America, 1995) 

Even God repeated Himself. Why? Because we forget. Because He wants us to notice something important. I reminds us that God provided in the past and He will still provide. He told the Gospel Story in four different books using four different perspectives. He repeats genealogies. Because they are important.

 For The Next Generation - We sometimes forget that even though we know the stories, our younger generation may not. It was the original reason I started blogging, so that my children and grandchildren would know and remember what God has done in my life.

 Stories only told verbally seem to change over time. Remember the telephone game in elementary school? Ya, that. It is important that things get written down. It helps prevent information from being changed or distorted.

 

My takeaway? I don’t fear repetition (as long as it’s not from memory loss). Embrace the retelling. Learn from it. Don’t change the facts; just help the next generation to remember.