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Lessons in Teaching
By Jennifer McClure | December 18, 2007
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This summer I began giving piano lessons to a five-year-old girl. Each week after she leaves I marvel at how well she is doing.
During one of these times of reflection, I noticed how there are many things she simply has to memorize and accept that they mean what I or the book says they mean. She’s not old enough to understand and process the reason behind these things, and to explain them all, to share all my knowledge with her, would overload her with information. How similar that is to our relationship with God — except so often we, or at least I, ask why.
Though there are times the Lord explains to us why something is or happened a certain way, as he did in the case of Lazarus (John 11:4,15), there are plenty of other times we simply follow and obey His leading without understanding His reasoning behind His direction. For example, check out God’s call for Abram to leave his home and journey to a land the Lord would show him (Genesis 12:1). When he set out, the Lord didn’t explain why, but once he was there, after he had obeyed the Lord’s direction, God revealed part of His plan for Abram’s life through a promise (Genesis 12:7).
In matters concerning the end times, eternity, and sometimes even life-changing decisions, God conveys to us only what we need to know, but He is not obligated to explain or to satisfy our curiosity. As I’ve heard many say before, He knows we could not handle knowing everything there is to know about these matters. But also, He desires we simply trust and obey — that we take Him at His word.
In the times of not understanding entirely what we’re stepping into and why, it is reassuring to know verses such as Jeremiah 29:11 and Isaiah 55:9. I thank God that He has a plan and I don’t have to devise one for my life. All I have to do is follow His leading and remember He’s much wiser than I will ever be.
It’s interesting how in the Genesis 12 story of Abraham, God gave him a command coupled with a promise. Once he was in the place where God called him, he understood why he was there, why God’s promise in Genesis 12:2-3 couldn’t be fulfilled if he stayed where he was. He wasn’t in the land the Lord wanted his descendants to inherit.
The Bible is full of commands and promises. Perhaps once we are to the place God has called us, the promised land, we too will understand why.
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January 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Very nice thoughts. Now how could I have known that I should have put a copyright on my bumper sticker? In 1974 I wrote “GOING UP?” with red reflective tape on the bumper of my 1965 VW. It’s really strangely cool that my daughter would come up with that phrase for this site.