Like a Vortex

Countless souls are eternally forgotten the very moment they are gone. Not Sir Isaac Newton! Generations will always remember this formidable mind of extraordinary genius. His work helped push back the frontiers of Physics and Mathematics. Newton is regarded as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.

In classical mechanics, Newton’s third law of motion states: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ It means that if an object A exerts a force of say, 5N, on another object B, B also exerts equal magnitude of force (in this case, 5N) on A, in order to offset the force from A. In this example, the force from A is the action, while that from B is the reaction.

This law explains why a swimmer is able to swim. As the swimmer pushes the water backwards with a certain force, the water molecules too propel them with the same amount of force and in the opposite direction (that is, forwards); hence, the harder they push the faster they swim.

Perhaps you’ve ever been an eye-witness to a crash scene. Suddenly a speeding Hyundai Accent hurtled off the roadway and collided head-on with a stationary car of the same make and type. You must have noticed that both cars were damaged, and not only the parked one. This seems very anomalous. The first car shouldn’t have been wrecked at all.

Again, Newton’s law can be used to explain the apparent anomaly. When the racing car collided with the other one, it impacted a certain amount force on it. It too impacted equal magnitude of force on the first car, so as to counterbalance the one it received. That’s why both vehicles were damaged.

A jet engine operates on the application of Newton’s third law of motion. The engine burns a mixture of air and fuel at the front. The gases then gush out through a nozzle at the back of the engine. Thus as the gas jets move backwards they thrust the aircraft forwards.

What lesson can we glean from the law of action and reaction? It reminds us of one universal law: you reap what you sow. Right on from when I could discern right from wrong, I’ve never seen or heard of a farmer who planted rice in his field and tomato germinated instead; neither have I ever read that in history books. No, it doesn’t work that way. A man reaps whatever he sows. If he sows wheat he’ll surely harvest same, not pumpkin or apple or cucumber. This is as sure as anything.

Newton’s law echoes the fact that whatever we do has its reward. It reminds us that for every effect there’s always a cause. What we do today is a viable seed that germinates in the future. We can’t defy the law of Karma as much as we can’t run away from our own shadows.

The contemporary society is increasingly leaning towards liberalism. We’ve now got lots of rights and freedoms for our enjoyment. Society tells us we can do whatever we like, so far this is legal and doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.

But in all we do we should always remember payback time. Liberalism may offer us unlimited choices, but it can never protect us from the consequences of those choices. If you sow the seed of immorality you’ll reap spiritual decay. When you sow iniquity you reap the wind. Sow the seed of corruption and have a harvest of destruction. If you show love you’ll reap kindness. There’s no escape from the reward for every work on earth, whether good or evil.

Time doesn’t affect the reward for every deed under the sun. Your payback time may not be today or next year or 2017; it may even not come during your lifetime, but it will surely come one day. Rewards for our actions are like a vortex―we can never avoid them!

In Bible times, King Adoni-bezek achieved notoriety for cutting the thumbs and big toes of his captives. He too suffered the same fate in the hands of his captors. ‘“I have treated seventy kings in this same manner and have fed them the scraps under my table!”‘ King Adoni-bezek remarked. ‘“Now God has paid me back.”‘ What a fitting reward!

One day, a man discovered that the water he’d just drunk from contained faecal deposits. His son was the brain behind that terrible deed. When the father could have punished the child he recalled that he too had done exactly the same thing to his own dad. ‘A perfect reward!’ you say.

The moral of these two story is clear: Humans can choose to behave anyhow, but they can’t avoid the consequences of their actions. Everyone will reap what they sow. No one can rebut this simple truth as well as they can’t refute Newton’s law of action and reaction.