What I don't know
As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
-Ecclesiastes 11:5-6
For someone like me who's always sizing up variables, options, and outcomes, this truth is humbling. Of course, it's always humbling to admit what I'll never know about God-indeed, that mystery is even comforting. Yet seeing how that should affect my everyday way of living and engaging the world brings it home in another way, also bringing strange comfort.
I can't figure it out. This affects my pride: I won't have it all together. This affects my laziness: I can't always take the shortcut. This affects my charity: I need to love and care well for others, because of all that I don't know as well as what I do. This affects my dependence: I need God, because knowing His plan might lull me into the illusion that I don't.
In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
-Ecclesiastes 11:5-6
For someone like me who's always sizing up variables, options, and outcomes, this truth is humbling. Of course, it's always humbling to admit what I'll never know about God-indeed, that mystery is even comforting. Yet seeing how that should affect my everyday way of living and engaging the world brings it home in another way, also bringing strange comfort.
I can't figure it out. This affects my pride: I won't have it all together. This affects my laziness: I can't always take the shortcut. This affects my charity: I need to love and care well for others, because of all that I don't know as well as what I do. This affects my dependence: I need God, because knowing His plan might lull me into the illusion that I don't.