One Thing I Know
In the movie Colour Purple young Nettie is being driven from the house and from her beloved sister Celie by her lecherous brother-in-law because she dared to reject his advances. Sobbing her heart out she repeatedly asks him, "Why? Why?" In Franz Kafka's book The Trial the central character has been picked up by the police, brought to some place and before some judge and tried. He never learns what the charges are or who is bringing them. "Why?" is never answered. They asked a leading physicist about 40 years ago to summarise in 100 words or less where his research was leading him. Fifty times he wrote, "Don't know." And in the Richard Chamberlin version of the
Man in the Iron Mask a man called Philippe is grabbed by soldiers, carried to an island prison and his head is encased in an iron mask. He hears the guards ordered that they're never to speak a word to the prisoner. Going out of his mind he looks through the bars of his cell as the men in the boat that brought him are rowing away and he screams, "Why? Why?"
Every day we meet people who are in chains of one kind or another, people who are isolated for one reason or another--all inwardly screaming "Why?" Why them and not others? Burdened with loads they didn't ask for or with drives they would love to be free from they're imprisoned or exiled in a crushing and brutal isolation; in prisons without bars and with no real knowledge of how they ended up that way.
Jesus healed a man born blind. If the inquisitors had asked him, "Why you?" he would have said he didn't know. If they'd said, "Why not others also?" he would have said he didn't know. They did ask him and his parents other questions and they confessed they didn't know. Why this, why that or why the other thing? All this ignorance didn't obliterate the fact that the once blind man was able to say, "One thing I know. I used to be blind and now I see."
And when you hear someone say, "I know whom I have believed..." it steadies the heart. Jesus knew very well that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life but he was sure (John 17:3) he wanted us to know the Father because he knew to know him is to enter life eternal.
There are so many unanswered questions in a single short life that it's a profound relief to know anything, to be sure of even a single thing. To be able to take even a single thing in your hands and say, "This I know..." or to be able to look at a single person and say, "This I know, she (or he) will never..."
When we keep our word and make people sure of even one thing we remind them of the One that truly matters to whom to know is life eternal. Get to know people who know God so that you can get to know Him. Be someone that helps people to know Him. (Want to give your life to Christ? Contact me, Jim McGuiggan: holywoodjk@aol.com)
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.