"Interrogatives........................"

The young Third Grade student was sorting ten different animals into their correct classification and, in identifying the snake as a reptile, assigned it, for a trait, the fact of having scales all over its body. Then he looked at me quizzically, wanting to know why that was so; and, me being wise in my seventy-three years of existence, I answered “because that’s the way God created it”. Enough said; or so I thought. A few seconds later when he tried to assign a whale the label of “fish”, my informing him that, because it needed oxygen to live and was actually coming to the surface to breathe air, it was a mammal, brought me another look. “Well,” he almost snorted at me; “God certainly messed that one up, didn’t He!”…. Amusing; but the story is, it seems to me, representative of all of us when it comes to whatever mental image we hold of this One who is said to have, in the beginning, formed this whole scenario out of nothing. We possess only the Word and the journey in as much as we have known it. The initial item gets filtered through our individual brains in as much as we choose to think for ourselves; and that process, then, tends to be influenced to some degree by the second, life giving us lessons that test what our church and our favorite celebrity preacher has stuffed into our reasoning. Questions? There will always be questions since the subject matter cannot be contained by any inclusive definition we attempt to give it. In truth, whatever form we presently maintain for our Maker must always be one under construction in as much each and every day is another step through the veil. We learn as we go if we remain open to His tug on our reins. This is as much a part of “encounter” as anything else! It speaks to us of “life” in our vessel beyond just “me, myself, and I”; and when circumstances beg for explanation, it is assurance that, whether or not I understand all that is going on around me, what is going on within me is a security unto my soul. This is what the old need to teach the young, not by thumping the Book, but by living the lesson before them. If I fail in that, math and science and all else falls short of giving them what they’ll need in the road before them…..