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KAM's avatar

I'm 65. I've spent a lot of my life getting degrees, studying, trying to understand, then teaching, working, doing, gaining experience (personal knowledge of a relational and practical nature).

In a few years, it will all be gone, worm-eaten or worse (embalmed). Hard-earned, invaluable lessons, gone. Yes, I write, and teach, and something of that is passed on. But not that much, and especially after a few MORE years.

I believe in the resurrection of the body, and declare it every week, with the other faithful. What will that mean, for this knowledge?

St. Paul says ALL my knowledge, all OUR knowledge is "in part," at best. In the New Jerusalem, I would imagine, it will be like a pocket calculator on my desk, next to this terminal on which I write, tapped into the internet.

But acts of love ,for my Redeemer, and for others, for the sake of my Redeemer—these are eternal gestures. They cannot be repeated, nor deleted. They live in eternity.

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Cynfully Joyous's avatar

I think you just kinda sorta said what many of my most recent posts have been trying to say. I have always loved those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 because, as you said, it's not about the love of a man for a woman and vice-versa. It's all about not being able in the flesh to understand the magnificent, unexplainable, unbounded, all-encompassing love of God for His creation, man. Of course, that is why the next verse deals with childish ways and seeing through a glass darkly, knowing only in part until we are reunited and in the state of being as our Creator always planned for us.

I think it is important to recall the end of the revelation:

“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known…”

Prophesies pass, ramblings cease, knowledge passes, the partial passes, childish ways end…

Thank God for this post. I have to share that I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place with all this striving to know. I understand the desire because I was once on that journey but I now know that all that striving doesn't move the needle one notch in our desired direction. All it leaves us with is guesses, theories, hypotheses and more yearning. I meant what I said, that I am contented to leave the gaps in my knowledge on the subject of understanding God's love for me to what it now is and trust that when I meet Him face-to-face, that on that glorious, unimaginable day I will know Him and His love in full. I rejoice because He does love me.

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