I don't understand how Jumbo jets, with a take off weight of around three hundred and fifty tonnes, manage to get off the ground, never mind fly at cruising speeds of over five hundred miles per hour. I know there is an explanation based on physical science and aerodynamics but I just can't get my head around the whole thing, though when I'm up there in one of those monsters, I guess I try not to think about it too much and sort of take it for granted. I don't understand how computers work. Yes I know it's to do with binary code and microprocessors but when I open one up, it's just a mass of electronic pieces and circuit boards and I just don't understand how it gets from being that to what I see on my screen. I suppose it's the same with memory sticks, floppy discs, CDs and DVDs for while I know what they do, I just don't think I can ever really understand how someone could invent such things. I guess, like all middle agers, I've gone from living through half of my life without even the idea of a computer to now probably using one every day and feeling completely lost without it.
I don't understand cats. They're just not like any other animal I know. Dogs, you can predict and generally the old adage that a dog can be 'man's best friend' holds for most canines that I know, especially if you're the one holding the bone. Cats, on the other hand, I have always seen as animals that seem to view all other species, including us humans, with suspicion and a feeling of superiority and friendship is very much on their terms, though this week I have not been so sure. And I'm speaking from first hand experience. When we returned from holidays, our beloved Whitie seemed to have deserted the family home, though he had been fed on a regular basis, albeit outside the house. After a day or two he then reappeared but showed a certain reluctance to eat anything and constantly whined around the house. Then he just disappeared and was gone for three or four days. Having enquired unsuccessfully from all the neighbours as to his whereabouts, we assumed that either he had found a new home, had become 'wild' or something more sinister had happened to him and then he just reappeared again two days ago. Now he refuses to leave the house, eats all his food and wants constant attention and affection. MAybe he's more insecure than I thought. Anyway, I don't understand cats.
And there are many other things that I don't fully understand, like how females can remember things for years when the rest of the world has forgotten them, how some people have no appreciation of music, how soda bread never tastes quite like the farls your mother made, how hairdressers and barbers are experts on every subject, how a country can go bankrupt, how birds know to return to the same place every year to build their nests, how terrorists justify murder by calling it war, how opera can be enjoyable, and how political correctness is the Bible by which we all live.
I never understood why I had to rote learn my Tables at school, though I'm glad I did. But I do understand Biology, though it took me to read the whole text book when I was seventeen to fully grasp it, even though I think my teacher had given up on me. And I do understand that since then, so many other scientific developments may mean that some of the information I learned to be true may now be obsolete.
Yet I'll never understand how God could love me so much that He would sacrifice His only Son for me so that I might live simply by believing in His death and Resurrection and confessing my sin. I'll never understand it but I do believe it and of course that's all I need to do. Job once said 'How great is God—beyond our understanding' and I suppose that's why the writer of Proverbs recorded that well known verse that says 'Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.' And isn't that the trouble, that because we do not understand all the ways of Almighty God, we choose to reject His plan of salvation. But then Jesus didn't choose the elite minds of society to be His disciples, for He knew that a simple faith is all that is needed. Maybe Paul puts it best in His letter to the Hebrews, when he states 'By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.' That's the secret, for it's by faith that we come to understand our Creator and it's by reading the whole text book that we fully grasp it. Do you understand now?
