Given

 There is a myriad of things we were given to know. Things the world is not privy to, or if they are, choose to mock because they have no understanding. It’s like showing up on the Mongol Steppe with a calculator. Not today, but back when Genghis Khan thought he’d live to conquer the world. They’d likely look at it, tap it against their knee, try to bite into it, and eventually throw it in the dirt because it wasn’t sharp or pointy, and you couldn’t kill anything with it.

Even with the fineries of the modern era, many a man is still beastly in his reasoning, concluding that if something does not fulfill an immediate need or purpose, it is useless. If they can’t understand it, it’s never because they don’t have the necessary aptitude; it’s because it’s a worthless thing undeserving of understanding.

It’s why you often find yourself trying to explain something to another person and getting frustrated because, to you, it’s a simple thing, yet to them, it is beyond reach. It happens more often than not when my wife tries to show me floor plans for a project she is working on and asks if I can see it. What I see is a bunch of lines with numbers underneath. When I tell her as such, her patented response is, ‘how can you not see it? It’s right there!’

It’s not that I don’t want to see what she’s seeing; I’ve even toyed with the idea of shaking my head in the affirmative to bypass the ensuing discussion. Whereas I see lines, she sees an entire kitchen or basement come to life before her eyes. She can envision the end product from a handful of squiggles on a blueprint; I can’t.

That’s the difference between how the world sees the Word of God and how the children of God see it. Even so, there are things we see in a mirror, dimly and those which are given to us to know in part. Furthermore, there are secret things that belong to God, and yes, there is scripture to confirm this, but it seems as though it’s the secret things we really want to know while ignoring the things revealed that belong to us.

It’s akin to being in the Garden, having free reign to eat of every tree therein, but always going back to that one tree forbidden to partake of. It’s not as though the other trees would not have satiated their hunger or satisfied their longing. If you have children, you already know. Tell them there’s one thing they can’t do, of all the things they can possibly do to fill their time, and that’s the one thing they’ll insist on doing.

Just the other day, I spent a good twenty minutes explaining to my four-year-old why it wasn’t a good idea to toboggan down the stairs in the laundry basket. None of the reasons, reasons rooted in reason and logic, seemed to satisfy her, and we went round and round on the topic until she got bored and went on to do something else.

As hard as it may be for some, there are things we were given to know, and there are things we were not. The things we were not given to know are not of a salvific nature and so ought not to trouble us, yet, for some reason, they do.

We want to know everything, right now, this instant, but fail to ask ourselves to what end. Why do we want to know the things we want to know? The knowledge of a thing will not prevent you from going through it; obedience will.

There is a difference between knowledge received and knowledge applied. I know a hot stove will burn my hand. If I touch it anyway, the knowledge did nothing to protect me from the pain. On the other hand, if I know a hot stove will burn me and I am careful not to touch it because of this, then I’ve applied the knowledge I’ve received and prevented undue suffering.

2 Peter 3:11-12, “Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.