An employee is suddenly not at work on a Monday. The office is cleared out. The employee’s information is wiped clean from the online directories and website pages. It is almost as if the employee never existed… though the employee was there on Friday…
Not a word is said about the sudden disappearance and near-erasure of this employee.
In such a situation, we have a tendency to want to find out – to want to know what happened. We want to speculate. We want to discuss.
On one hand, we want to make sure we don’t make the same mistake or mistakes that that employee must have made. On the other hand, we just want to know. We don’t actually need to know, and we have no real reason we can name for wanting to know other than, simply, wanting…
And this landed for me in a new way today, as I discussed this whole scenario with another:
Is that not the work of the devil? I asked, almost surprised to be saying it myself. That was the whole deal with Adam and Eve – he set up a sense of ‘needing to know’, which had them eat from the Tree of Knowledge. That was the spark and the downfall for Adam and Eve… and it has been handed down to us, that same need to know.
He and I both sat there silently for a few moments, letting the idea sink in.
“That’s… a really good point,” he said.
We both kind of chuckled as we processed further exactly how good a point it was. Clearly, it had struck a chord in us both, for more than just the present scenario.
I mentioned how I was now reconsidering whole chunks of my life with this new perspective, and it was all occurring very differently suddenly. After all, I have already admitted plenty that one of my biggest struggles in life is when I have an experience of not knowing… either about how something is done or what is expected of me, and especially about what is to come next for me in life as a whole. When I now consider these instances of not knowing from the perspective of ‘the devil is who’s telling me I need to know,’ suddenly, I have a place of freedom around them all. The overwhelming thought is that ‘I don’t actually need to know, do I? God will make sure I know what I need to know. And He likely won’t tell me what I don’t need to know. So, I genuinely DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ANYMORE ABOUT NOT KNOWING…’
About anything in life… I have no idea what actually will happen with my job in the next eight months. And, as I saw today, I truly do not need to know. That doesn’t mean I don’t prepare for different scenarios or prepare for success. It simply means that I don’t need to worry about the fact that I don’t know which scenario will be revealed. When it reveals itself will be the time for me to know and the time for me to respond. Until then, I can do my best where I am and head in the direction I feel called to go, to the best of my ability. I don’t know if I’ll make it that way, and that is totally okay. I’ll find out when I get there. If I don’t need to know, I likely won’t.
Perhaps life actually is on a need-to-know basis. Perhaps it is too heavy for any individual to carry, knowing everything… you know? My yoke is easy and my burden is light… because you don’t have to know everything I know. 😛
Goodness gracious… God is gracious, and God’s Grace is miraculous and wonderful.
Thank you for this blessing today, God. Thank you so much. And thank you for this love and this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2023
hannah ananas 