I’m sitting here with a piece from a jigsaw puzzle I picked up off the street while walking my lab this afternoon. Somewhere in my neighborhood there is a puzzle that cannot be finished because I have the missing piece. There are so many theological and philosophical puzzles that are an enigma because we do not have all the pieces of the puzzles. The problem of pain, a loving God in a world of suffering, did dinosaurs and men live on earth at the same time, who wrote Hebrews, ifJesus is coming again why is He waiting; these are just a few. Paul says we are looking through a glass darkly. He’s right. We, with our finite minds, continue to try to understand the mind of an infinite God and we don’t have all the pieces.
Throughout the ages God, a self-revealing God, continues to share a few. In times past He spoke through the prophets but then He revealed Himself via the birth of Jesus. Jesus was and still is the finest vision of God’s true nature. Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” Our continued problem is we see Jesus through the eyes of a tax collector, a fisherman, a physician and a homesick missionary. Each of them were limited in their ways to express what they saw and remembered. Therefore, we continue to see God through a foggy glass.
As we grow, as we seek, God is delighted to find opportunities to give us glimpses and insights. Hopefully, I understand more now than I did when I was forty or fifty. Note I didn’t say twenty because then I knew it all. Jesus said, “Ask and it shall be given.” I’m asking.
Written by Roger Bothwell on February 9, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org