How to Think 4 - Yearning Thursday |
“Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom; set your heart on a life of Understanding. That’s right-if you make Insight your priority, and won’t take no for answer, searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt, believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours; you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2: 2-5 –MSG)
Yearning and humility are two sides of the same coin. We can’t have one without the other. To approach our ability to think and current knowledge with humility is to realize we don’t yet know what we ought to know and so, we yearn to more fully understand what we don’t understand.
This is not a yearning for facts and figures, this is a yearning to comprehend the hearts of people, to study the heart of God in this life, to meditate on the heart of a book or movie or art or society. According to the words of Solomon, written above, this yearning to understand the heart comes from our heart as much as it does our minds. The heart in Biblical times was the seat of our emotions, the core of who we are, the deepest part of ourselves. In other words, this is not a superficial hunger to know things in order for us to be recognized by others as being smart. This is comes from who we essentially are; someone who seeks first to understand before being understood.
To truly understand something or someone, means that we are not always trying to get to the bottom of things. We realize that it is in the journey that we learn.
To illustrate this, I will tell of a time when a few friends and I were walking on a bridge from Lahaska, NJ to New Hope, PA. As we were walking and talking, I was looking around at my surroundings. The air was still filled with the warmth of the sun, but the cool breeze of night was
moving in, the hills that are on either side of the bridge were silhouetted against a brilliant sky, the lights of the sister towns were all coming on, many interesting people were walking by (New Hope and Lahaska are inhabited by many artist and writers), and the river was flowing at a good clip beneath us. I felt alive just taking it all in. It wasn’t until we were half way across the bridge that I realized my friends didn’t share the same sentiments. One said, “How long is this bridge? I just want to get to the other side.”
Many people approach life as something to get through, and they just want the bottom line to get them through the best they can. But to yearn to think well, we must recognize that all of life is teaching something in every moment; not just then when we have the right book, or attend that class, or talk with that person, rather the person that you sharing space with right now in these moments has something to teach you, creation all around you is speaking of God and your place in His creation, there is so much in front of your eyes in this very second. Take it all in. Give up your bottom lines. Live in this moment.
I have known many people through my life that were academically brilliant, but that could not have a meaningful conversation if their lives depended on it. A person that yearns as we are talking about here, seeks to understand and learn from all things and all people.
One expected result of all of this is how large God grows in our minds and hearts. He breaks out of all our preconceived ideas of where He is and where He is not and who He chooses to speak through. I can honestly say that I have never known fear (awe) of God like I have since I have sought to understand life in general. This is what I think Solomon meant in the opening verse. Yearning leads to fear of God and the fear of God is the beginning of true wisdom.
Yearning and humility are two sides of the same coin. We can’t have one without the other. To approach our ability to think and current knowledge with humility is to realize we don’t yet know what we ought to know and so, we yearn to more fully understand what we don’t understand.
This is not a yearning for facts and figures, this is a yearning to comprehend the hearts of people, to study the heart of God in this life, to meditate on the heart of a book or movie or art or society. According to the words of Solomon, written above, this yearning to understand the heart comes from our heart as much as it does our minds. The heart in Biblical times was the seat of our emotions, the core of who we are, the deepest part of ourselves. In other words, this is not a superficial hunger to know things in order for us to be recognized by others as being smart. This is comes from who we essentially are; someone who seeks first to understand before being understood.
To truly understand something or someone, means that we are not always trying to get to the bottom of things. We realize that it is in the journey that we learn.
To illustrate this, I will tell of a time when a few friends and I were walking on a bridge from Lahaska, NJ to New Hope, PA. As we were walking and talking, I was looking around at my surroundings. The air was still filled with the warmth of the sun, but the cool breeze of night was
moving in, the hills that are on either side of the bridge were silhouetted against a brilliant sky, the lights of the sister towns were all coming on, many interesting people were walking by (New Hope and Lahaska are inhabited by many artist and writers), and the river was flowing at a good clip beneath us. I felt alive just taking it all in. It wasn’t until we were half way across the bridge that I realized my friends didn’t share the same sentiments. One said, “How long is this bridge? I just want to get to the other side.”Many people approach life as something to get through, and they just want the bottom line to get them through the best they can. But to yearn to think well, we must recognize that all of life is teaching something in every moment; not just then when we have the right book, or attend that class, or talk with that person, rather the person that you sharing space with right now in these moments has something to teach you, creation all around you is speaking of God and your place in His creation, there is so much in front of your eyes in this very second. Take it all in. Give up your bottom lines. Live in this moment.
I have known many people through my life that were academically brilliant, but that could not have a meaningful conversation if their lives depended on it. A person that yearns as we are talking about here, seeks to understand and learn from all things and all people.
One expected result of all of this is how large God grows in our minds and hearts. He breaks out of all our preconceived ideas of where He is and where He is not and who He chooses to speak through. I can honestly say that I have never known fear (awe) of God like I have since I have sought to understand life in general. This is what I think Solomon meant in the opening verse. Yearning leads to fear of God and the fear of God is the beginning of true wisdom.