Knowledge + Wisdom
Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
Don’t expect to understand everything at once. Nobody is born a nuclear physicist. To be one comes only with lots of time and lots of study. And even then, the physicist will still be very much in the dark about the forces and structures of atomic nuclei.
To expect or demand a clear understanding of God and the things of God in this life is to expect the impossible. Even in the next it will take a miracle from God. We understand a little today, a little more tomorrow, and hopefully even more the next day. Is that maybe what Jesus was hinting out when he cured the blind man?
“Putting spittle on the man’s eyes, Jesus asked, ‘Can you see anything?’ The man opened his eyes and said, ‘I can see people but they look like walking trees!’ Then a second time Jesus laid hands on his eyes, and he saw perfectly; his sight was restored and he could see everything clearly.” That is how it is to be with us and our understanding of the things of God. It comes little by little until we see clearly in heaven. That means we must live a lot by faith. It also means we must be very patient with ourselves and one another.
A person with partial sight is going to make a lot of mistakes and do a lot of tripping and falling. With our partial understanding of God, it can be expected that our way of living is also going to stumble. God is still teaching us; Jesus is still touching the eyes of our understanding; we are in the process of seeing the light of knowledge and understanding.
Meanwhile we must live with what we’ve got. Keep praying for more knowledge and deeper understanding, but more important is that we use wisely the knowledge we already have. Knowledge plus wisdom led the blind man to Jesus.
