Learning is an amazing part of life. When we were children in school we couldn’t wait until summer break, and ultimately graduation, because we wanted to be finished with learning. Sitting still and listening to the teacher was often a tough task, and we just wanted to go to the playground. As we age, we learn that we still learn.
Learning is a good thing. It is not simply the acquisition knowledge, but the process of learning that adds flavor to life. We may enjoy learning in different ways; some are more hands on while others enjoy a lecture or reading, but we all should enjoy learning. Martin Luther once said, “If God had all the answers in His right hand, and the struggle to reach those answers in His left, I would choose God’s left hand.”
Wouldn’t it be nice to just have our heads automatically filled with everything we need to know? When our operating systems need an update, they seemingly magically are given all the new data they once lacked. But we do not acquire knowledge that way. As Luther stated, we receive it through struggling, often through experience and trial and error. We learn by putting in some work. We need some skin in the game. The joy of learning something should be equal parts learning what we now know, and the process of finding it out.
There is so much about God that we don’t know, but spending our lives trying to learn about Him makes life enjoyable. I learn something new about God when I see a flower or butterfly I didn’t know existed. I learn something new about God when I feel His presence during difficult times. I learn something new about God when I hear a person give a testimony to a miracle that took place in their life.
In Psalm 25:5 David sang, “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.” If we are open to it, God is always teaching us. We do not sit in a classroom, but if we opened our eyes we would notice there are little lessons being taught every day.
We learn in bite sized chunks. It takes twelve years to make it through each grade in school, and several more for any higher learning. We learn the alphabet before we learn to read, and we learn how to add and subtract before we learn algebra. In the same way, God doesn’t fill our head with all there is to know about Him because we learn a little at a time, the way it should be. When the finite tries to understand the infinite, this is the best we can hope for.
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