Week 3, Saturday – December 23rd
Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.
Psalm 25:4-5ab, NAB
I am 42 years old and have been a Christian my entire life, and I still need God to teach me. Deeply and often, I am aware of that need. I have read and studied the scriptures with varying consistency since I was in grade school, and I still need the Lord to make His ways known to me. I have a degree in theology and spend time reading spiritual and theological works, and I still need Him to guide me in truth. Every single day, the need is there.
These aspects of my life are capable of lulling me into contentment with already knowing and doing plenty to live as a follower of Christ. They are also the reasons I continue to bump up against what I do not yet know or fully comprehend.
How often I say, “I don’t get it, Lord! I do not understand.” In these times, I find three options typically at hand: to humbly and eagerly seek Him out as my greatest teacher; to assume in pride that I will figure it out and explain it away within the limits of human comprehension; or to deem the matter not worth the effort it might take, whether by His guidance or my own knowledge, to find understanding.
It’s a critical choice every time. And, my oh my, do the results differ tremendously from the first option versus the others.
When I pray as the psalmist did – Lord, teach and guide me. Make yourself and your ways known to me. Help me understand – I am heard by the One who never ceases to share Himself with me. The truths I know are deepened and clarified. The natures of God, of me who is made in His image, and of human life in the grand and the minute are all more deeply revealed. Each time I approach him with the desire to learn from Him, I am both rewarded and humbled.
St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest intellectual writers in Christian history. His contributions are vast in the realms of theology, philosophy, and scriptural studies for over 750 years. He also suddenly ended his writing endeavors a few months before his death, with a statement that all he had written seemed “like straw” compared to God’s revelations to him. No matter how extensive Thomas’s knowledge and understanding grew to be, God still had more to reveal and Thomas still sat before the Lord as one in need of His teaching.
Every day is an opportunity to follow St. Thomas’s example, and none more so than the days of great celebration in the Church. In the seasons of Advent and Lent, and in the feast days of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and everything in between, the works of God are brought to the foreground for us to consider with renewed attention. We are invited to hear, contemplate, and respond to God’s revelations. We are offered the opportunity to intimately know the One whom we worship.
All the Christmases I have celebrated, with readings of the Christmas story and sermons on the Incarnation year after year, and still what I comprehend of their meaning is miniscule. This Christmas season, I commit to the Lord that I will approach with a humble but firm belief that He wants me to know Him through the things I celebrate. He has more for me. He has insight and beautiful clarity to offer. He has love to reveal.
I am here to learn from You. I am here to learn of You. Teach me, O Lord.
Carrie In Writing 