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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion February 2, 2007  “I Don’t Know.”

A daily Spiritual Growth Opportunity

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Frontline Devotion for Friday, February 2, 2007 by Mike Martine

I Corinthians 13: 9-12: For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 “I don’t know.”

Do you know the wonder of these words?

I think most of us grew up with the idea that, someday, we would know everything. That idea, for me at least, died its final death in college, where one of my favorite professors said to us, “Don’t be proud of what you know, be proud of your questions!”

He was a wise, wise man.

On that day I began to find comfort and excitement in the fact that we “see through a glass, darkly.” Yes, there are times we would like to know everything, the mysteries of the universe, everything that God knows, but…isn’t it wonderful that those things are bigger than we are?

Some folks look at faith and they think that, because Jesus says the “way is narrow,” the truth is narrow, too. I don’t think that’s right—or biblical. Paul, among others, assures us that the mysteries of God (what I would call the “truth”) are too big for us to get our minds around.

God’s truth is bigger than our truth. This means that we, in our lives of faith, are a called to a marvelous quest—a quest to see what we can see “through the glass,” while realizing that the search holds more marvel and wonder than we can hope to take in during our lifetime.

God is like an endless ocean that we can jump into, swim in, explore, and—in the course of all of this—never cease to find wonder and beauty.

Wonder, beauty, mystery, and finally, an assurance. The assurance that we can never master it all. The assurance that God doesn’t expect us to.

Rejoice in the journey, and let God’s love light your way.

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