Life does not always require understanding

Think about it.

If you're going for a walk, you don't think about what muscles you're using. As you walk along, you'll notice the people around you, the music that's playing on your ipod, the colors of the cars driving by, the smell of the air. Basically, you aren't thinking about the mechanics of the electric pulses from your brain, down your nervous system, to your motor muscles, making them move in a constant falling/catching motion that we all know as "walking." Most of us don't even understand it. We don't need to understand it in order to do it--we just do it.

The only understanding a child needs to have when her dad says, "Jump! I'll catch you!" is that her dad is trustworthy and fully capable of catching her. That's all she needs to understand. She doesn't need to understand why he's asking her to jump, though sometimes it's obvious. If there's a fire in the building and she's trapped with a window as her only escape, it's plain why her dad would want her to jump to the safety of his arms. But sometimes it might not be so obvious. And she doesn't need to understand the father's task of estimating how far out his daughter is going to jump, how much time he'll have to correct any guesses as her foot leaves the windowsill, and how to catch her with enough strength to stop her fall and enough gentleness to hurt her as little as possible. These are considerations that she doesn't need to know--that she doesn't need to understand. If she tried to understand it, she'd freak out.

In the same way, if someone sat down with you and told you everything that the most-studied scientists know about the form and function of how you walk (complete with colorful diagrams), it would take days--years to understand it fully. During this amount of time, you could be doing something else. Like seeing the world. Experiencing different cultures and different people. Getting married. Raising a family. Speaking to nations. Writing music. Making millions. Who knows?? Don't get me wrong; it's good that people dedicate time and energy to study the body. But it's not something that everyone needs to understand. Why? Because we don't need to understand things in order to do them.

Now I'm getting to my point--the inspiration of this post.

I don't understand what God is doing. I really don't. But I don't have to. All I need to understand is that He's trustworthy and fully capable of leading me, communicating with me, hearing me, loving me, and keeping me.  Because He's God, for goodness sake.

Trust in the Lord with all  your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

P.S. The whole chapter of Proverbs 3 is pretty amazing and thirst quenching. Read it here.