SMITCHing

A a couple months ago I got a call from my daughter's boyfriend. He wanted to marry her. Mercifully, I had a heads up, and a pretty solid pitch from her for why he was the right guy. I really trust her. She's not eighteen, or nineteen. She's 24, and she's been living on her own since she was 17. She'd tell you that neither one of us would endorse every decision she's made in the last seven years, but the Lord has been faithful and kept her in His caring embrace. She's wiser than her 24 years. And she's said goodbye to at least one great guy, not because there was anything wrong with him, but because she recognized it was a mismatch. So when I got the heads-up about her boyfriend's call, I was ready to give my blessing. His name is Sterling, and I think it's fitting. He's been refined, "as if by fire seven times". So why do I now feel so oddly conflicted about it? I've thought a lot about that since we first began t...

I ran across this fascinating image today. It's a telling look at the intersection of our ability to see and hear, and it's shocking how little we can detect of the radiant energy that surrounds us when unaided. Just a sliver, really. I think there's a profound spiritual lesson here. We live in a culture that for hundreds of years has told us that what we can know is limited to what we can observe—what we can see and hear. Granted, our technology has let us expand the boundaries of what we can see and hear. The graph tells us that much, otherwise we'd never know about the area outside our sliver of "knowing". But what if there's a way of knowing that transcends the bounds of the graph? What if there's a way to relationally know something or someone with a faculty that perceives beyond seeing and hearing? The Christian Scriptures use a curious word for this kind of knowing: yada . It is used to indicate a uniquely deep relational intimacy, in...