The entrance of your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple. (Psalms 119:130, NKJV).
Some measure of a disclaimer must precede this column over my inability to access either the right words or enough words to convey my thoughts to you this week.
Economy describes this situation not because I am skilled, but more my lack of vocabulary. Disinterest in school and being the fourth of four children preluded this deficiency.
Words beyond par, birdie, bogey, double-bogey, hole-in-one, and albatross had as much passing interest as the latest tune on the radio or fishing for crappie or dove hunting where I shot an entire box of shells and hit nothing. A fellow hunter on that day killed a low-flying dove with a baseball swing of his shotgun. I stuck with golf.
Metonymy escapes my writing skill, but in golf, I’ve had two career holes-in-one, which says something. As difficult as locating a gobbler in the wind or walking up quail, words evade me, but I still aim to achieve the golfer’s rare albatross (double-eagle). Focus leaves little room for other endeavors.
Optimism, even when false, can be mightier than the pen. Re-framing this dilemma in a better light, I consider myself a reductionist. An honest description for this might be ignorance or just plain lack of talent, a picture worth no words at all, an unfinished book.
My latest reduction interest is an app called “What 3 words.” This app reduces the entire earth into three-meter squares using three words as an address for each square. Only 40,000 words and their combinations were used. Important for search and rescue efforts, this app is mathematical reductionism at its finest. But then, the rule of three has its roots.
“But Jesus said, ‘You feed them’” (Mark 6:37).
With these three words, isn’t this where an end meets a beginning, where a word unfolds its meaning, peels its layers back, and pierces me with the stark and guttural realization He means me? Isn’t this the “more” waiting to be discovered, to be found again while wading through otherwise meaningless pursuits that all men in all ages do. What took me so long?
“The entrance of your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.”
Never what I strain to discern fully informs me, but what opens me to truth, to God, is the very thing I cannot attain. Words release meaning through time in whimpers but also rise in unwinding ways to crescendos of enlightenment. A dark life sees by sight only. Grace reveals the unseen.
For too long, the story in Mark’s gospel slept somewhere in my intellect, never reaching consciousness until its tangibility culminated as Jesus speaking directly to me. Waking from my slumber from all those meaningless pursuits, those three words entered, and I understood.
Clarity changes relationships. Forbearance, the most difficult virtue, is easier now. To those who God gives, God expects.
To those God expects – you feed them, a three-word address to Christians.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15, NKJV).
Prayer: Send out thy light and truth, and let them lead me….