Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Isaiah 28:10 -- On Learning and Additional Potential

"For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:"
Isaiah 28:10


This is an excerpt from some verses that talk about how the Lord teaches us.  He makes the point in the previous verse that you can't teach children the same way you teach adults, and then he moves on to say this.  I think this is something that we can all understand... that we need to learn the basics first, and then build upon that, step by step.  We get that on some level, even though I think that we are very impatient, and often claim to be more advanced than we are, like the toddler claiming to be big enough to do everything his parents do.
Physical growth doesn't always mean a lot, as I think we have all seen.  We can be adults and still not understand love very well, or faith, or social skills.  We might be great at some things, but not at others, because we focus on different areas and are interested in different things.  Even with the big, abstract things, we probably know more than we did before.  We have added a few lines and a few precepts.  In comparison, God knows all of it.  I know it isn't necessarily pleasant to think of ourselves as children after all that work of growing up, but maybe it softens the blow that we are *his* children, and he is teaching us all as fast as we are able to learn.
Today, let's be open to learning the next line and the next precept.  Let's work on being patient and not expect to understand everything at once.  If we want wisdom in order to do good, God will grant it to us, but even so, it most likely will come a little at a time as we work on it, not as 10 petabytes of extra brain storage conveniently installed while we sleep.  Let's listen and learn and understand that we aren't as big as we think we are.  We still have some growing up to do.  Let's be okay with further potential, and jump in and learn and grow. :)

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