Knowing

Metamucil.

This is fiber supplement older people often take to help with their…um…bowel movements. Since I’m not much of a trendsetter, I have decided to start a new trend. I’m going to start taking Metamucil. I’m not doing this out of necessity or because I want to be more regular. Just want to start a trend…please believe me. The last time I tried to start a trend it didn’t work out so well. I tried to bring back “courting.” But every time I asked a girl if I could court them, they walked away. Another time I tried to make skip racing popular again. Back in the day, people would skip all the time. Then I thought to myself, “I’m competitive. Maybe I should race someone in skipping.” So I did, and I won. But it didn’t catch on. Maybe Metamucil will be more successful.

Now there really is no way of knowing whether or not I’m going to be successful in my attempt at making Metamucil a daily habit for 20-something year-olds, but there is one thing I do know. Humans have this longing sense to know. We want to be in the “know,” or we butt in conversations because we want to know what people are talking about. If you are every around little kids, they are always asking, “why?” They are so curious as to how the world around them works. Or they want to know the reason for why people do what they do. I remembering growing up I would always ask my parents “why” after they told me to do something. They would always quickly reply, “Because I said so!” After living in almost 23 years, I still want to know! I went to college and paid tons of money (well, my parents paid….thanks mom and dad!) just because I wanted to KNOW! I honesty think that we just never quit wanting to know.

In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer gives a great metaphor about how you can know something. He says that inanimate things are very easy to know. You can study it, and you can tell people what it looks like. You know the object. But it gets a little trickier when you try to get to know a living object. For instance, it will take you a little longer for you to know a horse. You would have to study its behaviors until you could finally tell someone that you know the horse. It gets even more complicated when it comes to knowing a human. Unlike a horse, humans can keep secrets and things hidden. You can know someone for 10 years, and they could do something totally out of the ordinary that you wouldn’t expect. So you really don’t know that person. In this instance, the ability to know a person falls on to the person who is getting known. It is up to them if they want to divulge knowledge about themselves. Are you following me? I hope so because this is very similar to our relationship and our pursuit of knowing God. The first thing we must understand that is that God has allowed us to get to know him. Jeremiah 24:7 says, “I will give them a heart to know me…”

I am humbled and very thankful that the God of the universe has allowed me to get to know Him! I hope I never miss the opportunity to get to know Him more and more each day.