Associate Minister's Musings
The Associate Minister’s Musings
Regular readers will be aware that my comments usually come from something that has attracted my attention during the first week of each month, not that this date is important, it’s simply the week before the deadline for submission for the next month’s edition of the magazine. By now you will have got used to the various things that cause me to stop and ponder and the randomness of my thinking. So this month I thought I would consider all the things that I don’t really notice, all those things we take for granted. There are so many things that I rely on, I don’t understand them and don’t really want to; I just want them to work. How does a letter posted in London yesterday get to me today? I won’t start on the computer but where is the internet? How does my brain work? Why can I easily remember trivial things but forget other important things? Some things I could research and find out the answers, but others have no easy answers, for example, what is God and what does God do? They are the kind of questions that children ask easily and yet as adults we feel we should know the answers and therefore shouldn’t need to ask.
Growing up brings all kinds of challenges from the disappointment of young children when they realise that their parents can’t fix everything to the dilemma of teenagers beginning to understand that actually they do not know all things, then the struggles of adulthood and trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t seem to make sense at times. I became a scientist to understand everything but soon realised that some things were a disappointment when they were explained, I learned about mystery which for many people is what makes life exciting, would you rather understand the daily movement of our planet in relation to its star, or enjoy watching the ever changing colours of a sunset? Sometimes I think we try too hard to explain God instead of standing back and accepting the mystery of someone we cannot understand. Trusting in a God that we cannot explain is not easy, but then I trust other things that I take for granted and cannot explain. Maybe we should look for the mystery of God more often, allowing him to reveal aspects of himself to us and simply enjoy his presence whenever we can instead of trying to explain things. Who knows what you might discover?
Julie Watson