in love
Rest
by: Julie Cloninger, HFL Team
28
Does everything have to be tested and tried? Can some things just be learned by taking someone else’s word for it? So many times, I have wanted to convince my children of some truth by being super emphatic. I have even appealed to my apparent character and proven commitment to truth and goodness.
But it has not worked. They continue to have to try things, experience things, feel things, fail at things, and come to their own conclusions. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic and they do take my word for some things.
I’m beginning to think the testing and trying isn’t actually a problem. The need to have personal, actual experiences that are witnessed and affirmed by another is a legitimate human learning pathway.
We start off as children without much knowledge at all. We learn by watching and mirroring what we see. In an ideal setting, this is a great plan. Watch, learn, mimic, and affirm. This beautiful pattern of learning and growing is broken because the people who model behaviors have brokenness in their lives. The process for learning works smoothly and beautifully, but the behaviors, emotions, and thoughts are learned dysfunctionally due to the brokenness in the “models.”
I am writing this article not to focus on the broken process of learning, the brokenness of ourselves, or those we have learned from. This is our reality. There is real beauty in living right. where. we. are. In other words, there is beauty in reality. Since God meets us right where we are, we can be confident that God resides in reality.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes about the reality of our new life in Christ. It is indeed a gift given through the Spirit. I am writing this so you might allow God to show you a better way— a way learned through resting in love.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. 2 Cor. 4:6