For Sunday, January 16: I Am Not Skilled To Understand/My Savior My God

You know what I love about the hymns? They are timeless, they cross the borders of generations and their message remains the same. Nothing alters the truth of God and what he does and has done for us.
The older I get, perhaps I have said this before?, the more I appreciate the hymns and the message of them. I get it! Back in the day I just thought they were meant to torture us. I mean who wants to sing 12 verses of some song accompanied only by a pipe organ?!? I'm just sayin'. :) So while some people have become critics about the modernization of hymns I for the most part appreciate it! Anyway, that is a rabbit trail I don't feel like journeying along right now.
Love this hymn because we AREN'T skilled to understand. So many think they should and do understand but I have seen from my own life and talking with others that the more we think we understand the more we see we don't! Face it, God is a mystery. But he is a mystery to be enjoyed and embraced not one that is frightening and life threatening. I once heard of someone say they knew as much as God. Whoa. That person is very mistaken. We simply aren't skilled to understand what God does. If we did we would most likely explode from all that we learn! God knows that as humans we are wired to search out meaning, purpose, truth, etc. So he gives us a long life to search those things out, we simply aren't skilled to come into knowledge of it all at once. Explosion remember? :) Does it drive you nuts that you don't or can't understand more of God and the mystery of him? BREATHE. And then embrace him for who you understand him to be right now and just let him reveal as time goes on. Enjoy the journey!

I Am Not Skilled To Understand
My Savior My God (Aaron Shust's modernization of the hymn)

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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