Partnering with the super(natural)

I love math.

So why don't you marry it!

Real mature. Fine, I enjoy math, but I love my wife. Happy now? Moving on.

About 2% of the population responds to me saying, "I love math," with "Me too!" So for 98% of you reading this, I have about 50 more words to convince you to stay with me. You can do it!

Math helps me think about the super-natural.

What is the natural, and why isn't it super all by itself? What does it mean to invite the supernatural? Has something super ever become just plain natural?

As we build GodSpeaks, we are mostly building something that would seem VERY super to people 100 years ago, but is very natural now. Except for a few things that we think will always be super. This is where I want to bring in some numbers.

In maths we often talk about sets of numbers. We might say that "set 1" (and label it S1) and fill it with numbers like this -

S1 = {2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...}

You might want an easy way to describe S1 and realize they are all even numbers. If so, you nailed it - first try.

Let's think of another set, S2 and fill it with numbers.

S2 = {4, 8, 12, 16, ...}

S2 looks a lot like S1, but not quite. There might be more than one way to describe their relationship -

• S2 is every number in S1 multiplied by 2.
• S2 is every other number in S1.

Both are true, but there is (at least) one more general description -

S1 is a super set of S2.

Meaning, S1 contains all the numbers in S2, but also more.

Let's go back to the super-natural. I like to think of the supernatural as a set of all things both natural and more. I don't know that anyone could be overly specific about what is in the 'super' set of creation, but I believe that Jesus gives us access to this super-set and when it enters the natural, it is amazing.

Ephesians 1:3 says it like this - Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

The Father always has the super waiting for us and I like to look for ways to partner with it. I mean, Jesus did say to his disciples - Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

Again, I don't think anyone has the full understanding of what that super-set is full of, but we know it contains more than our natural understanding.

I believe that experiencing the super often starts as revelation, or wisdom beyond our understanding. However, what is divine revelation to one generation, over time becomes common knowledge - so much so that to future generations, it seems totally normal. I try to practice being thankful for normal things that were definitely super 100 years ago (Yea for refrigerators!).

While I believe that many things God has given us have become part of our natural understanding, I also believe that God STILL has something super available for us. This is the premise of GodSpeaks as we are using -

• Normal code (though super even just a couple decades ago)
• Normal phone (though super even one decade ago)

But we are asking God to invade our natural with His super.

When we pray over the code we wrote that chooses when to send you a push notification, or what memory to bring to your attention, we are asking God to do what we can't. We don't know how you are feeling. We don't know what you are thinking. We are asking God to bring you the right memory at the right time and giving him our very natural tools to work with.

Heavenly Father, thank you for doing far more than we can ask or imagine. Thank you for using the foolish things to shame the wise. Let our mustard seed of faith move mountains. Let our child-like wonder be fulfilled. In the name of Jesus, the ultimate creator. Amen.

For The Curious

If you're a developer, you know what this is doing. If you are not a developer, but are curious, this function (a block of code that can be called to perform a specific task) is called whenever we need to choose a number. We choose a number when -

• We are building a time for a reminder (hour, minute)
• We are choosing which day of the month for a reminder (day)
• We are choosing which memory to show you

In each of these cases, we give the minimum and maximum number and it returns a 'random' number. For example, if you have 20 memories, we'd say getPrayerfulInteger(0, 19) and whatever number it returned would be the index of the memory we returned to you. Ta-da!