Have you ever ended a day in a daze and wondered, Does anyone know ...
• how much energy a 2-year-old has?
• how many times I’ve said I’m sorry?
• what it took for me to get to the end of this day?
• what it feels like to be on demand 24/7?
• what it’s like to be out of money? alone? bone weary? unappreciated? In fact, does anyone know what my life is like?
God does. Ellen White wrote: “The Lord is good. He is merciful and tender-hearted. He is acquainted with every one of His children. He knows just what each one of us is doing. He knows just how much credit to give to each one. Will you not lay down your credit list and your condemnation list, and leave God to do His own work? You will be given the crown of glory if you will attend to the work that God has given you” (Christian Service, p. 268).
I DON’T KNOW
One of the little discoveries of my life has been to realize that there is so much I don’t know. Not that I ever thought I knew everything. But the balance of what-I-think-I-know next to what-I-know-I-don’t-know has tipped considerably over the years.
I clearly remember leaning against the front seat behind my dad in our rumbling Ford station wagon, my feet precariously balanced on the hump that helped me see where he was driving. At 5 years old, I was glowing with success that I could read the billboard towering over us at the red light. I announced to the whole family that I really didn’t have to go to school because I’d learned how to read already—and that was enough knowledge to buy the food I needed.
I KNOW HE KNOWS
That was years before computers, the information age, instant communication, Google, Wikipedia, and access to 4,000 volumes in one download of a library app. Now just mumble the words “I don’t know,” and someone nearby will begin tapping their iPhone to tell you what Google knows.
But the barrage of knowledge has also created an invitation to admit reality: “I don’t know.” And it’s OK. It means that I’m limited. I’m still learning. I don’t need to know everything. I will pass by
the mass of trivia and focus on what is important—and I will be more aware of how privileged I am to know Someone who knows everything.
And to my overinformed, overanxious world, I can testify, “He’s the most important to know.”
“I cannot read the purpose of God in my affliction, but He knows what is best, and I will commit my soul, body, and spirit to Him as unto my faithful Creator. ‘For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day’ (2 Timothy 1:12). If we educated and trained our souls to have more faith, more love, greater patience, and a more perfect trust in our heavenly Father, I know we would have more peace and happiness day by day as we pass through the conflicts of this life.
“The Lord is not pleased to have us fret and worry ourselves out of the arms of Jesus. More is needed of the quiet waiting and watching combined. We think unless we have feeling that we are not in the right track, and we keep looking within for some sign befitting the occasion; but the reckoning is not of feeling but of faith.
“When we comply with the written Word, according to our best knowledge, then we are to walk by faith, whether we feel any special gratification or not. We dishonor God when we show we do not trust Him after He has given us such wondrous evidences of His great love in giving His only-begotten Son Jesus to die, our sacrifice, that we may believe in Him, rest our hopes in Him, and trust in His Word without a question or doubt.”
Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, vol. 2, p. 242
