Keys to the Kingdom By Carolyn Tucker
If I wake up during the night, I don’t usually look at the clock. But when I wake up later in the morning and feel that it might be time to “get up and at ‘em,” I’ll check the time. One morning I turned my head to see what time it was and I saw 6:35:35. I thought, “Oh my stars and garters, I’m cross-eyed like Clarence the lion on Daktari!“ I hadn’t thought of that TV show since the last time I saw it in 1969. I loved watching Daktari because of my two favorite characters Clarence (the cross-eyed lion) and his adorable cohort Judy (the mischievous chimp). I don’t know why I was seeing cross-eyed other than the fact that I’ve celebrated a lot of birthdays since 1969. Since I don’t sleep with my glasses on, maybe I should buy a digital clock with bigger numbers.
The older I get, the more I appreciate this scripture: “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely” (1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT). Sometimes believers have a tendency to get hung up on what we don’t know rather than what we do know. So why did the cookie crumble that way? Well, when push comes to shove, does it really matter? The cookie still crumbled and I can’t do anything about it. It’s done, it crumbled, and I’m not God.
If we stay the course and practice living and loving like Jesus, scripture tells us we’ll understand all things by and by. If we focus on things we won’t ever understand in this life, that prevents us from focusing on the things we do understand. When the expert in religious law asked Jesus a question, it was supposed to be a trap; however, it turned out to be one of the most profound impromptu question-and-answer sessions in the Word of God. “’Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?’ Jesus replied, ’You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments’” (Matthew 22:37-40 NLT).
Jesus spoke many times in parables, but this legalistic man’s question was answered in straightforward transparency. Jesus’ answer was so easy, even a cave man can understand it. It’s doubtful there’s one person on planet earth that totally understands everything in the Book of Revelation. However, those two most-important commandments can be seen with perfect clarity through the eyes of a receptive heart. The Good Shepherd’s words recorded in the passage of Matthew can’t be misunderstood, but they can be ignored.
Certainly there are things that have happened in the lives of my loved ones that I don’t understand. However, I do understand that I have finite thinking and my ways are not always God’s ways. I’m not on His level, and that‘s why I use my faith to completely trust Him. Some day I’ll know why things happened as they did, so for now I focus my spiritual eyes on the two most-important commandments and my personal calling. And that, dear friends, is a full-time assignment with a retirement that‘s out of this world.
The Key: Keep focusing on Jesus and, in the end, you’ll eventually know everything you ever wanted to know.