Newton's Law of...Dominoes?

Tweet: "I am very excited to be teaching in Ignite tomorrow. Our Domino Effect and an 8 year old king!"

Have you ever played dominoes? Or, as I recently learned, Mexican Train?

If you haven't, you're not alone -- I haven't either. The only thing I've done with dominoes is stack them in a row and then pushed them over to create a sick train reaction that is awesome for about 23 seconds at the most.

But I never did anything like this...

Sir Isaac Newton developed three laws of motion in 1686.

1. First law: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.
2. Second law: The acceleration  of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F and inversely proportional to the mass m, i.e., F = ma.

Basically, what happens is something stands still unless it’s bumped, shoved, run into, jolted, smashed, etc. Also, the amount of force put onto an object determines the impact it has the on the other object.

So what does this have to do with an eight-year-old king? Stay with me, I promise it'll all make sense!

2 Kings 22 records the surprising story of Josiah. At eight years old, he becomes king of Judah. I can't imagine an eight-year-old running a Wal-Mart much less a kingdom! 18 years into Josiah's reign we see him making some amazingly wise decisions. He humbles himself before the Lord and does what is right. He has all the power in the world, he can control people with a few words from his mouth, and he decides to honor God with his actions. Not bad for being eight.

Josiah's story reminds me of the domino effect because throughout his story, Josiah makes decisions that effect others immediately, later on, and after his lifetime. One of these decisions is when he finds out that, 'The Book of the Law' has been discovered. This was most likely the book of Deuteronomy. As soon as Josiah learns this, he orders the entire book to be read to the entire nation! He knows how important the Word of the Lord is and he wants his people to know the same.

This brings us to Newton's third law.

     3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Further into the story we learn that God is going to bestow disaster upon the nation of Judah because of their disobedience to God before Josiah's reign. But (I love that word in this story), because of Josiah's humility and obedient response to God, God promises to spare Judah the judgement while Josiah is still alive. Judgement has to be brought upon Judah for its action of disobedience, yet God spares Josiah because of his reactions to Him.

Our domino effect is this:

We live in an incredible individualistic society here in America. We believe in individual rights, beliefs, responsibility, ability, etc. We are so focused on ourselves that we don't realize the effects our actions can have on others sometime. When we interact with people, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. But, if the force of our actions overwhelms them, then they can end up like a bug on a windshield. Broken.

Why not turn our individualism into a strength of ours? We need to individually make the choice to try and be a positive reaction to others. When people encounter us, their reaction should be a feeling of love and encouragement. Because you never know what effect your action in that moment is going to have on someone (or a nation) down the road or down the Mexican Train. :)