Day 3683 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 33:3 NIV

For wisdom just might hold that we may never truly understand anything until there isn’t anything left to learn.

Because, well, what is understanding without knowledge? And what is knowledge but the accumulation of information? And yet what is the information known as knowledge ever capable of helping us know if we don’t at first agree to the learning of what we don’t know yet? And how can we ever agree to learning anything we don’t yet know if we otherwise, like everyone, live as if we know everything? And how can we know everything when even the past proves lessons we’ve either never learned, and thus now don’t know, or those many we’ve merely already forgot?

And thus knew once but now know no more?

This is the simple complexity of what understanding must always remain. It’s found within this rain that pours in pain always unplanned upon this plane in which we plan our paths toward the plain and simple without a care as to the more that always exists both of the simple and yet too forever beyond and always underneath. Indeed, what do we know of all that’s long been considered beneath our belief? What belief is beyond what we’ve become behind these bashful barricades our disbeliefs have designed? What all doubt do we all but demand from within this hope help by the hand?

Is hope to be understood as something so small as to be held close? Near? Soon? Does hope exist in time or is rather time quite an adversary to hope as in how it either threatens to run out before we have our hopes or rather to steal the hopes we’ve had when it runs out at some point ahead? Do we know what’s there awaiting within all that’s still up ahead waiting? Are we able to want it enough to refuse the fear of the many failures we’ll find within the fragility that all learning proves us to embody?

Do we even care what’s waiting up there at all?

Alas, I dare say, and humbly so, that no, our treasures remain here within what is a world in which we store our boredom beside our bedrooms and never wander into that wondering as to why we don’t just throw them out. It’s like we want them around simply for the sheer sake of their giving us something to brag about. But what? What of all that already is is truly enough to overcome the wealth of the worth of what we have no idea is to one day be? And will we ever possibly know what we don’t if we remain proud of what we are?

What are we? Are we understanding? Are we wisdom? Are we wise? Are these questions to be answered by the eyes that seem to see the substance of things that we can, for the moment, rightly claim that we know for now? What of what we know right now could be possibly proven mistaken by this time tomorrow? I mean, is this not the way in which wisdom works? Both through mistakes made right and too understandings proven mistaken in order for them to become the beginning of another misunderstanding made right?

Such is indeed the overall purpose of learning. It meets us where we are with the express expectation of never at all daring leave us anything the same. Ever. No, rather learning, as done in the pursuit of understanding, is something that’s undertaken within the humble anticipation of a growth in knowledge in regard to whatever it is that we’ve set our sights upon studying. Does this mean then that the act of studying is the same as the overall outcome that is understanding? Is understanding truly nothing more than some facts-based findings as found by our figuring out what all is from what more isn’t?

Is that not what mistakes are? Merely choices made in what’s eventually proven a contradiction to wisdom? Are wisdom and understanding the same? Or does not wisdom prove understanding to be something that, like wisdom, is something that we’ve no business thinking ourselves perfecting within this place so finite and fleeting?

Does understanding agree to become misunderstood, kind of like how so much of our past does now? Or rather is understanding now better understood from where we stand as both victims of past mistakes but also victors who failed to let those many misunderstandings prevent us from growing beyond them?

Actually, I think that’s our fear, oddly enough.

It’s that realization found in the struggles we’ve fought to forget as a result of our not wanting to now know the many painful ways through which we came to grow into what we know now as learned, more often than not, through the hardest of ways possible. Yes, so many of life’s lessons are learned the hard way through such things as hindsight and the humility it inspires inside. Yet to us humility is still something akin to dying inside as it contends against the very same pride that so loves to pretend that all of life we already understand.

How can we when considering that we’ve literally never been this far before? And what more then of faith? For life we’ve all had a great deal of time and trial in which to turn the corners on who we’ve been into our being now the better that we at least hope we’ve indeed become. But faith, no, for all of us faith is something that we’ve followed less and thus known less about having not found reason to fight toward it as long as we have this life we’ve lived. No, nobody alive has the ability to claim they know more of faith than they might of life because faith is something we either find or fight against at some point well after we started this journey toward wherever we may come to believe it’s bound to be.

Indeed, faith is something of a continued mystery in that it unfolds a little more all the time in what are strange ways within quite infrequent days, but only then to the often unraveling of the ways in which we’ve already lived within those days now behind that prove only what we were as the basis for what more we might still become. But what then can we know of what we’re going to be since we’re still on the way?

For again, truth is that we cannot understand anything until there isn’t anything left to learn.

But if we knew now what we don’t know then we’d have already reached the end of what are here defined as “great and unsearchable things” that we “do not know.” And to that, as believed by all who live as if they know or understand all of life and everything else, I would ask simply is this the end of all you truly hope to be? Because, simply, knowledge and wisdom and truth and understanding are all meant to be things that remain perpetually veiled so as to invite us ever-deeper into them.

Is this day today, this person we are within, truly as far as we want to go? Or are we rather still somewhat curious as to the more we might know, learn, grow, see, be, become?

I personally shudder at the suggestion that who I am is all I might be for I know me, and in that I know too that I don’t know me at all. For the fact is that, as frail and limited humans, I know that all that I know about me is only what I’ve already been. Now that’s not to say that I don’t also have some bearing upon the better that I still hope to be. But I understand that, as of today, there is simply no way that I can already be that better as I still seem to see many ways in which I need to improve.

And so to contemplate the chance that I might be already who I was made to become is, to me, a downright betrayal of the betterment that I can imagine. But the problem with even imagination is that it’s not proven as of yet, and in some ways perhaps not provable at all. I mean, we’ve all imagined a great deal of things that ended up having no time nor place within our lives thus far. Will they? Who knows? He does, we don’t.

Which is pretty much the overall underlying point and purpose of faith and thus our existence either finding it or finding only excuses to fight against it.

Danger then is that defined inside the difference of that singular choice as made by all pretty much every day. It’s that we either find faith and thus too the path that leads us ever-closer to He who is faithful or we rather fight against our finding it out of our fear of finding out that we are as foolish as our pasts have tried to tell us and thus end up continuing said enmity against He who is faithful. Problem then is that He is also the Truth, the Life and the Way by which both are combined into what remains perfect evidence that tells us plainly that we know nothing.

Of life, of faith, of truth even, much less the way toward wherever they lead.

Because we’ve never been there. In fact, on the infinitely more micro, we’ve never been here. This moment is one entirely new to us. Mentioned that thought in yesterday’s post in regard to the specifics of time. And I’ll do the same for example’s sake in regard to this discussion today in regard to just how unsearchable the rest of life is supposed to be as held by He who can see the rest of the story as opposed to our inability to do the same.

6:47 pm on March 24th, 2025. None of us in the western hemisphere have known life at that time. Because it hasn’t happened yet. And yet we, as baser miscreants, we live as if it’ll both be there and too we there doing whatever it is that we usually do around that time. For me it’s cooking my dinner. For others maybe watching the nightly news or getting ready to debate the necessity of going to bed early with their still rowdy six year old. But regardless of what we expect, fact remains that we’ve not been there yet.

And thus we cannot claim we know anything about it as it is still to come and thus something that we cannot prove. Same is said of the every tomorrow that we’ve tended to assume already promised. Or of the plans we’ve made for vacations this summer that we’ve already bought tickets for. Or the color we’re going to paint our accent walls within the new house that we finally found after 3-4 quite miserable years spent looking for, (sorry, just really excited to get out of this apartment!)

But that’s the thing about it, this thing we call life and the faith that we so often to try fit inside as if faith is meant to fit within what we already don’t know all that much about.

Why do we do it? Why do we feign this image of wisdom, of knowledge, of understanding being something that we already hold? What benefit is there to find within our feeling as if we’ve found understanding? Again, is this as far as we’re willing to go, as much as we hope to know, the furthest into everything better that we’re willing to believe? And if so, then what more can we simply never know considering that, again, understanding is the outcome of knowledge which is learned along the way toward that outcome?

That’s why God calls us all unto a childlike faith. It’s because, as kids, we never wanted to consider a finish line in which the excitement could grow dim as we, by then, had decided to stop pursuing the impossibles of life. And in many ways this faith calls us into the pursuit of the same. The impossible. The illogical. The simply silly as considered alongside a stagnated society still sitting upon the sidelines with frown-lines where their smiles used to be.

Yes, faith calls us to embrace the understanding that says we can’t understand it. And I know that sounds something of a conflicting idea, one of those double-negative situations in which the first negates the second or the second the first. Either way, it also proves perfectly the point. That we can’t understand faith because it’s something either we’re still growing in or rather still running from. Faith, like life, it’s still underway. It’s unfolding as we speak.

And thus how dare we speak as if we have any way of knowing that which is still unfolding?

Because God never asked us to so arrive upon such an outlook as our having already reached the expected outcome. There is so little room for our lesser expectations in regard to faith that Christ himself likened it to proverbial camel staring into the impossibility of its racing through the eye of a needle. It cannot be. Because it’s unexpected. As far as we know, it’s perfectly impossible. And yet while “with man this is impossible”, “with God all things are possible.”

What then are ‘all things’? What is the furthest possible limit of ‘all things’? What is the undeniable worth of the wealth won within ‘all things’? Last I checked, we’re still down here discovering new things. And I’m not even talking about novel galaxies or better ways in which to recycle in order to take better care of this rental we’ve taken for granted. Granted, we’re still doing those things too, but on the more micro, each of us are still daily learning things that we never knew before. And so how dare we live as if we’ve found the limit of ‘all things’ that are otherwise deemed “great and unsearchable”?

No, there must remain more if we’re to ever be more than we’ve been, otherwise we’ve maxed out our movement in that bettered direction and thus haven’t anything left in which to hope. Because, if we know everything, then we’ve nothing left to learn. And if we’ve nothing left to learn, then we’ve each the undeniable ability to claim we’ve reached understanding in regard to ‘all things’. And if we do in fact understand ‘all things’, then we’ve absolutely no excuse to continue getting so much wrong as our continued regret knows we do.

Friends, for so long we’ve tried so hard to confine God into these cages of human understanding. But the fact is that “human understanding” is perhaps the greatest oxymoron of all time. Because “human understanding” has only ever inspired “mere human tradition”. And it’s all over the Gospels as to what Jesus thinks of mere human tradition.

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Is that where we want our hearts to be? Far from He who gave His life to show us that there is even still more to be found beyond the grave? I don’t know about you, but when He rolled that stone away, I pretty much lost every ounce of willingness to consider that I might know anything. Because there are still too many days in which I still wonder as to just how possible that could truly be. Simply because I am still learning to embrace His helping me to overcome my many unbeliefs.

And I don’t want to stop at unbelief. I don’t want to stop at one final prayer. I don’t want to read the Word only one more time. I don’t want to hit submit on this one last post. I want to feel this hope for all of forever because, as brutally impossible as that may seem, I also know already that there’s absolutely no way I could have managed to do this every day for now more than a decade.

No, there’s more going on than can fit inside my understanding of it. And so I’ll continue begging Him to help me beyond my understanding so that I can’t lean on it anymore. Because leaning on what isn’t there is the surest way to fall short again of the glory of He who is there waiting within a place prepared that ain’t none of us ever been!

I cannot imagine losing my ability to imagine in that something more. In fact, sounds like death itself. Because I believe that to believe is to be alive. And while it may be only the romantic in me, I refuse to believe that He created us to give up and die. And so I won’t, no matter how many times doing so may seem to make more sense, nor how many of all those around me give in to what they think makes sense.

No, I want the hope of believing that none of this has nearly that much reliance upon me and what I am willing or able to believe. He didn’t ever ask us to reach the limits of His existence. Instead He asks us to live as if He has none and thus life doesn’t either. And well, that just sounds better than a life lived for finish lines we know we can find.

Indeed, why not aim for forever instead and find then ourselves eager to race into what is to be rather than settling for what already is?

After all, He told us there’s more for a reason. And no, it’s not for us to find it but rather to find the trust that believes that He is that more and thus that we’ve never a finish line in life nor then faith as forever just doesn’t understand that kind of thing. For why would forever ever so agree to trying to understand less than it is already?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold