February 18, 2011
You’re in My Seat
A second time visitor to church was already seated when he was confronted by an old-timer who informed him that the chair he was sitting in belonged to someone else. Putting myself in the visitor’s place I likely would have been offended, embarrassed or at the very least aggravated. However the visitor chose a Godly response. Taking everything in stride he overlooked the lack of manners and quietly took another seat. His gracious response was a good lesson for me. You never know when God might come along side of us and ask us to change seats.
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Gail;
-----I’ve often heard that there must be tiny particles (like dust, etc.) in the air for rain droplets to form. More accurately, water will not come out of its vaporous state unless it has a non-gaseous surface attracting it. There must be a presence of dust, salts, ice crystals, and such in the air before clouds will form. Knowledge is a lot like that, too. Bits of information, bare facts, and basic ideas don’t become concepts and knowledge without some kind of framework attracting them. This is how things become tricky.
-----If you take a piece of knowledge apart, most often you will find the framework upon which its ideas hang is merely an assumption. For this guest, the vacancy of the seat led to his thinking he was welcome to sit there. Yet there were three alternative meanings to the seat’s vacancy: no one else had dibs on it, someone did have dibs on it, or everyone else knew it would collapse if sat upon (I’ve had that happen.) Rather than investigate the meaning of the seat’s vacancy, he hung his ideas upon assuming the second alternative.
-----There is actually very little knowledge that is not framed upon an assumption of one kind or another. Many scientists like to think the laws of physics and other stuff they know have found hard facts of reality for the coalescing of their conclusions. But really, these laws have been formulated only from their personal observations of the past seven centuries, and they have adopted the assumption of uniformity concerning everything they could not personally observe before then. The basic math and its extensions they’ve developed are the only absolute truth which can be learned by mere observation of the physical world.
-----Since we can not physically observe the spiritual world, the absolute truths concerning it had to be given us. The importance of the basic realities of the spiritual world far outweigh the importance of those concerning the physical world. When God knows the stakes for the dwellers upon earth are between Heaven and Hell, His love precludes their spiritual knowledge be gambled upon assumptions. He interlaced human history with bits of truth for the coalescing of our ideas, and these bits of truth collectively are His Book to us. But even it is not ultimately concerned about any man’s formulation of complete knowledge. It is rather concerned about his formulating enough knowledge to have the good sense to call upon Christ and begin behaving in an ever more godly manner.
-----The spread of Christ’s truth requires a substance like these tiny particles upon which vapor condenses into clouds. The tiny particles of Biblical behavior - smiles, hugs, generosities, honor, kindness, and amenities such as this guest showed the old-timer - are surfaces upon which ideas might come out of their vaporous states. Being bits of spiritual truth, they are the frameworks upon which someone else’s knowledge of the Truth might eventually hang.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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