What's the Attraction?

I just finished making another curtain. This is a simple lined panel made of scrap denim fabric. (I may have exhausted my jeans patch fabric with this project! See last night's blog.) It's hanging in the garage, as you might have guessed. The plan is to block out the late-afternoon sun and, perhaps, keep the garage cooler this summer.

What I like about this project is not the curtain (although I worked hard to put in nice hems). No, what I love is that the panel is hung on a magnetic curtain rod, which is critical since the garage door is metallic. I didn't know about magnetic curtain rods until fairly recently, and all I could think about was how drilling holes for the supports would leave a permanent defect in the door (assuming any next owner wouldn't want my denim panel on the garage-door window). To me, that's the big attraction.

I revisited the laws of attraction with Daughter #1, who just took her big science test the other day. Opposite poles attract. Like poles repel. It seems like the craziest notion ever. Why would two things that shouldn't go together actually bind to each other? And vice versa?

But, we all know this is true, scientifically, and I think it's true relationally as well. And, you know, even spiritually.

Attract literally means "to draw to." In the science experiment, if north and south poles are in the same magnetic field, there is a physical "drawing to" that you can feel if you hold onto the magnet and the object it's pulling in. Relationally, what is it that attracts us to other people--spouses, friends, co-workers? Often times, we see something in someone else that we don't have. We share something in the "field," but our opposite natures attract us with a curiosity--an interest.

In a relationship with God, one is drawn in by the "magnetic" power of Jesus.

"'And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.'" (John 12:32)

In saving the world from the consequences of sin, Jesus created the way--a new kind of "magnetic field," if you will--for us to be eternally attracted. And as a sinner, being on the opposite pole from the Lord, I need to know that I can be drawn in to Him.