A Pondering Thought

A.J. Russel writes "Seek not to know the future.  Mercifully it is veiled from you.  Faith is too priceless a possession to be sacrificed in order to purchase knowledge."

How frequently knowledge is lifted up as the quintessential value for human beings to possess.  The human knowledge base is expanding exponentially in all directions.  Yet, deep contentment and profound happiness remain elusive.  Christianity and other faiths are looked at askance by the science/knowledge folks as though faith folks are neanderthals from the Stone Age of superstition and voodoo.  Since being in naturopathic school I have known there are two ways of knowing.  One way is through knowledge and science (double-blind, placebo studies.)  The other way is through experience and life lessons learned (my grandmother used to use horehound to stop my cough.)  I believe faith is a) given by God, and b) acquired through life experience.  The Bible itself is testimonial stories of life lessons learned, not experiment results from God-Over-The-Bunsen-Burner lab tests.


Human beings have been granted the skills to use two sides of their brains -- not left and right, but physical and spiritual.  The physical side of the brain uses rationale and logic.  The spiritual side uses feeling and experience.  At one point Simon Peter says: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”  (John 6:68-69).  He can only know this BECAUSE of the relationship and experience of having lived with Jesus.  We too, who are believers, have come to believe and to know, not because the science says, "There is a God," but because we have each had experiences where God through Christ has touched our lives deeply.  Through those experiences and that relationship we have grown in knowing there is a Living God and He is very real.  My faith, as well as my life experience tells me that in God is the pathway to deep contentment and profound happiness.  The faith journey is the part of our lives that makes sense of all the rest of our existence.  We don't need the future.  We just need the daily walk with God.