DEVOTION, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER
5, 2012
“Obedience or Knowledge?”
WITH
ALISTAIR BEGG
Some things in nature remain a
mystery even to the most intelligent and enterprising investigators. Human
knowledge has boundaries beyond which it cannot pass. Universal knowledge is
for God alone. If this is true in the things that are seen and temporal, I can
be certain that it is even more so in spiritual and eternal matters. Why, then,
have I been torturing my brain with speculations about divine sovereignty and
human responsibility? These deep and dark truths I am no more able to
comprehend than to discover the source from which the ocean draws her watery
supplies.
Why am I so curious to know the
reason for my Lord's providences, the motive of His actions, the design of His
visitations? Will I ever be able to clasp the sun in my fist or hold the
universe in my palm? Yet these are as a drop in a bucket compared with the Lord
my God. Do not let me strive to understand the infinite, but spend my strength
in love. What I cannot gain by intellect I can possess by affection, and that
should be enough for me. I cannot penetrate the heart of the sea, but I can
enjoy the healthy breezes that sweep across it, and I can sail over its blue
waves with propitious winds.
If I could enter the springs of the
sea, the feat would serve no useful purpose either to myself or to others; it
would not save the sinking ship or restore the drowned sailor to his weeping
wife and children. Neither would my solving deep mysteries avail me a single
whit. The simplest act of obedience to Him is better than the profoundest
knowledge. My Lord, I leave the infinite to You and ask You to put far from me
a love for the tree of knowledge that would keep me from the tree of life.
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