June 03, 2014
Seeing a Need
The dairy section of the grocery store wasn’t
congested, but an elderly woman and I hit the cottage cheese/sour cream area at
the same time. I made my selection and as I started to move on I gave a
courtesy apology in case I’d been in her way. She said I hadn’t inconvenienced
her, but she was having a hard time finding the cottage cheese since all the
containers seemed the same. I showed her the different sizes and she held each
one in her hands as she decided how much she needed for her recipe. She settled
on the small curd in the medium container and told me about the strawberry
Jell-O salad with cottage cheese and pineapple she planned for a pot luck
lunch. We compared recipes and as I started to leave she said put her hand toward
her left eye and said, “Thank you for helping. I’m blind and I can’t always
find what I’m looking for.” Completely oblivious to her handicap, I have to
wonder if I too am blind. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his
brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him” (1
Jn 3:17 NIV).
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Gail;
-----We read from several scriptures that God knows every thought of man. This started a line of pondering for me that brought Him closer than if He’d sat down beside me in a body. A person’s thoughts and feelings extend deeper inside himself than he can even begin to perceive. Imagining each to be like a person, they interrelate in groupings like people do, each one bringing its own meaning to any grouping with which it associates. Then all the groupings similarly interact, forming a sort of culture of ways and attitudes and expressions that stream through your consciousness. We each perceive the tip of this activity, but like the unseen most of an iceberg, the overwhelming body of it remains hidden below a seemingly impenetrable surface.
-----Unless you’re weird, like me, we just take this for granted and do what our mental brew becomes.
-----But since I’m weird, I notice thoughts and feelings are not like numbers. 2+2 will be 4 to everyone who’s honest. Numbers have exact and limited expression. Thoughts, on the other hand, are approximations. They seem to offer an infinite number of variations. “Mustangs run fast,” describes something happening at either the local drag strip or on the open prairie. They are highly modifiable. “The mustang runs fast,” or “A mustang runs fast,” are similar, yet quite different. And as thoughts run through their various groupings to brew consciousness, they undergo minor modifications continually.
-----We understand each other by common ideas and concepts, the biggest part of which is language. But even the definitions of words and the meanings of favorite phrases and quips and sayings and expressions and habitual actions are slightly different for every person who uses them, because the mental mixture is inevitably different within each individual. Seeing that I have trouble knowing myself deeply, can I ever hope to know anyone else deeply?
-----Well, thank God for the concept of relevance. Generally it is good enough to know ourselves and others to a point only relevant with what we need to do. But specifically, it is never entirely accurate. No wonder life seems to twist and turn and writhe like a snake in a mud hole.
-----Yet God is the knower of every last detail of all this complexity, from the beginning of its creation to the never-end of its eternity in one individual, from Adam to every one of all the rest. And He is not just the knower. He is the understander of what it all means, individually and cumulatively. Knowing God to be that one consciousness who knows every part of me in all my ways and interactions, and that He knows every other person of existence the very same way makes me feel like I dwell within a secure understanding that I do not yet perceive. And since my place in it is precisely mapped by the Lord, I feel great company instead of cold isolation.
-----So, when I see another’s need it strikes me as tremendously important because God also feels and knows and understands it. Then, I get all confused again, knowing the person doesn’t even know his own need as he ought to, and I know it even less. But God does, though for now He’s kind of keeping it to Himself and making us guess.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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