I don’t understand very much and I am okay with that

When we are in our teen years and through our twenties, we understand pretty much the most that we ever will... in our own imaginations! I knew a whole bunch more about everything as a young twenty-something than I did when I was about 35 and realized that I was supposed to be an adult.  I was married, had a five year old and a two year old, and a mortgage.   I think the curve starts at about 15 when you starting thinking you know more than your folks and then peaks out at about 22 when you have to pay your own bills, and starts its downward spiral until around 30.  This is when you have actually lived enough life to realize (hopefully) that you really don't know all that much and there's so much to discover and learn. 

Now I'm reaching forward to that half century mark.  I know less but know it more surely than I ever have.  Life experience and time have proven out my lack of self-sufficiency and God's all sufficiency. I can admit mistakes more readily and learn from those around me.  I don't set up men on pedestals, and I realize that as hard as I try, God and His love for man are still beyond my wildest imagination. 

I've experienced life events that I have judged harshly when I was younger.  I am coming to realize that there is a story behind every outward appearance.  There are fears behind behaviors and that comparing really has no place.  I've realized I don't understand how people got where they are today and the combinations of hopes and dreams, both dashed and realized, that God has used to mold them into who they are today. 

I know that really smart people study the Bible and that there are divisions in the church over things that don't seem clear in the scripture.  If the scholars of the ages couldn't come to an agreement, how can I take a side strongly enough to cause a dividing with the family of God.  So, there's lots of things I don't really know.  There's a song on the radio lately that has this repeating line:

I don't know what You're doing.

But I know who You are.

                                                                          ~JJ Heller, "Who You Are"                            

I guess that's pretty much what I've come to realize.  I understand less of the ways of God and more of the character of God.  I have come to trust that His character is true and I know this more deeply than I ever could have at twenty.  I also have learned that life rarely follows the perfect pattern that we think it will when we're young.  Issues are more complicated and complex than we thought.  Yet, the important things are more simple that we could have imagined.

He loves us more than we can imagine.

He wants us to receive and live a life of love.  

The end.

I don't really know what all that means.  I don't know how to receive His love sometimes. I certainly don't know what it means to love all the time - when love means putting someone out of fellowship in hope that they will return to God, and when love covers a multitude of sin.   I don't really know about the rapture or about the millennium.  I don't really know about eternal security or at what point a person has actually surrendered and accepted Jesus for real and for sure.

I do know I need Him all the time.  I do know that I want to know Him more.  I am keenly aware that I've barely scratched the surface of knowing Him.  And I really am okay with that.  I'm actually quite confident that He has all these mysteries and me in His mighty and loving hand.  It is good.