"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5)
As humans we naturally want to understand. We want to understand how things work and why things happen and why our world is the way that it is. We have this longing and desire to understand things, and when we don't have an answer for something, we aren't completely satisfied.
We want things to make sense. We want our lives to make sense. We want to be able to connect the dots and align the pieces together so that we understand why certain things had to happen, why we had to come across certain individuals, and even why certain things didn't work out. We just want to understand.
But the truth is that we will never understand all of the things we want to understand. I know this is really hard, especially when life seems unfair. It's not fair for people to hurt, it's not fair for the amount of brokenness and disaster we have to walk through. It's not fair that we and our loved ones have to experience so much hurt and pain.
And not only is it not fair, it doesn't help when these things happen with no answer and no explanation, leaving us with no way of knowing or understanding. And sometimes the pain of not understanding can feel worse than the pain of what we're dealing with.
And though we want to understand, though that is a completely normal human desire, the Lord asks us to trust. To look to Him. To give up what we think is our right to understand, and to trust Him when He says that His ways are not our ways.
When we don't understand, we can still trust. When we don't have answers we can still pray. When we've got no clue what's going on or why things are happening the way that they are, we can look to the Lord and call out to Him.
He might give us understanding, but He might not. He might answer our prayers how we desire them to be answered, but He might not. He might give us what we're asking for, but He might not.
We don't have to know why. We don't have to understand. We don't have to have all of the answers. But we can trust fully and wholeheartedly in the One who does.
Our limited understanding puts us in the perfect position to trust the One who is all-knowing. And not only can we trust Him, but we can go through this life, all of the ups and downs and questions and confusion, knowing that the God who knows and understands everything is on our side.
We don't have to let the missing answers intimidate us, but we can lean into the One with all knowledge.
We can trust Him, for even when we don't know or understand, He does.
Blessings,
Elisha