An analogy I like about life is the lava lamp. The electric heat is the spirit and energy that powers life. The glass case represents life itself. Colored wax symbolizes our energy and focus on physical objects, blessings, hope, and prayers. When you're first born, everything is stagnant at the bottom. However, gradually life begins to flow through you, giving you energy and excitement. Willingly or not, the heat and light given off by your life impacts others.
The wax represents our focused energy in life - of which there is a limited amount. From a Christian perspective, the following paragraphs directly apply, but since prayer is instrumental in many other religions, the application can be applied less stringently than intended.
The energy of life is difficult to control since our power waxes and wanes as circumstances in life change. Nonetheless, the total amount remains fixed. Religiously, as the heated wax floats to the top of the glass, it represents our prayers seeking aid, relief, or hope with our circumstances in life. As the wax-bubble-prayers reach the apex of the glass, they cool and will eventually fall back to the bottom. The descending flow of wax corresponds to the answers to prayer: blessings, learning experiences, and opportunities. The more of life's energies in God's hands, the less influence has our own will and power. If prayer is going up in giant blobs, fast and furious under the pressures of life's troubles, few blessings appear to rain down. Correlation? People become more religious during difficult times. Conversely, as perfectly exhibited in the book of Judges in the Bible, when God sends lots of blessings down, almost no prayer continues upwards; people reject God in the good times. One puzzle with prayer is when the request's answer is delayed. The analogy contains a response to this as well: wax bubbles can hover in the middle, committing neither to the main blob at the bottom nor the fluctuating collection at the top. The answer to these prayers is "wait," and the answer will eventually succumb to fulfillment.
Right when things seem the worst and the effort of praying becomes taxing, huge blessings come down. We then forget God altogether aside from small, almost absent-minded prayers. Soon life becomes challenging once more which prompts prayers up to God, and the cycle repeats.
Other applications can be drawn from the endless cycle of heated wax trapped in a silicon prison. The dyed wax also represents interaction with other people. The more extroverted we live our life, the less we keep to ourselves, but people are more likely to throw that interaction back your way, keeping life charged. The size of the blobs is analogous to the importance and regularly of your relationship.
Military strategy and alternate applications use resource management. If the reserve force's size diminishes, the application of applied forces increases because of the direct correlation. As the use of one resource goes up, the availability of its source decreases.
The next time you're idly watching the clock tick, the fire burn, or the fly buzz look for a lesson. Remember that heated wax teaches about prayer, social interaction, and the limitation of resources. No analogy is perfect, yet despite its flaws, a lava lamp, when pondered carefully, can capably inform.
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Agatha Tyche
