Why are we uncomfortable with things we can’t explain? It’s just human nature to want to know the how and the why and the when.
A few online reviewers were uncomfortable with the way Little Mama’s house “talks” in Almost Home. I guess they thought I was venturing into the occult. But if you’ve ever spent time in an old Southern house, you know—they talk. They creak and pop for no apparent reason. Doors open by themselves from time to time. There are purely mechanical reasons for it, but Southerners being Southerners, we generally seize on those opportunities to commune with family members who have passed: “Did you hear that closet door open? Great Uncle Walter must be walking tonight, bless his sweet heart.”
Whether we attach ourselves to “the old latch jiggles open” or “dear departed Great Uncle Walter is restless and roaming our house,” we’re still offering up a reason, an explanation for whatever just happened.
A long time ago, I wrote a Southern Living essay about a debate that took place in my parents’ living room. Mama and her siblings were quoting Scripture back and forth, trying to decide whether they would know each other in heaven. Finally, she ended the discussion thusly: “Well, I just believe we’re gonna know each other. Who wants coffee?”
We get frustrated when we can’t intellectually understand things, but the Bible teaches that there are other means—which I hadn’t, well, thought about lately. Sometimes we struggle with small things, sometimes life-changing ones. We want to understand our own circumstances and feel lost when we can’t grasp an answer to “Why did this happen?”
When Christ prepared for the crucifixion, he made his disciples a promise:
“If you love me, keep my commands.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another advocate
to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.
The world cannot accept him,
because it neither sees him nor knows him.
But you know him, for he lives with you
and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. . . . .”
John 14:15-19
From the Apostle Paul:
However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
1 Corinthians 2: 9-12
God expects us to use our brains—those were gifts from him, too. But I'll be reminding myself this week that there's more than one pathway to truth and understanding.
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