What Do You Want to Know?
Something happened a few weeks ago that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. There was a moment that I observed something from one of my kids and in that moment I learned something about their truest self. When an episode like this occurs you always keep it in your heart. We can read in Scripture that Mary the mother of Jesus observed certain things about him during his formative years that caused her to log it down in some kind of mental journal concerning who Jesus was and what he was going to be. That was exactly what was happening with me on this occasion a few weeks ago.
We were at the Academic Bowl National Championships in Atlanta, Georgia. Both of my sons are on the CHS Academic Team and they were very blessed to get to qualify for participation in the championship tournament. We had already been through about 6 rounds of the competition when I walked up to Luke’s seat after a round they had just finished. I looked down at a white sheet of paper he had been writing on during the previous round. He had been jotting down names and dates of different historical information that was a part of the quiz bowl round they had just completed.
Me, being the one who is super competitive, looked at the things he had written and asked him why he was recording all of that information. I commented that they would probably not ask anything pertaining to that information again, and that it probably wouldn’t benefit him in the competition. He looked up at me as serious as he could be, and simply said, “Yeah, but this is all stuff I want to know.” It was in that moment that I wished I was more like my son. And I can’t even tell you how often I feel that way these days…
What I can’t get out of my head about that moment is that the reality that we all make an effort to know what is important to us. For Luke who loves history and is passionate about it, it is almost entertaining and fun to him to learn anything having to do with certain parts of the past. For example, while we were in the Mall of America in Minnesota he didn’t ride rides like the rest of the kids. He went into Barnes & Noble and bought a book about the life of Queen Victoria. He said it was significant because it dealt with how her life influenced certain governments and countries in the world over the last century. He is fascinated by that kind of stuff. He never gets tired of reading about it and thinking about it.
But I want to give my son some credit for not just being interested in history. He is interested in God’s word and he studies it regularly on his own without show and with no prompting from his parents. The other day he brought his bible along to lunch so he could get his reading in and I saw him do so at the table. I remember on a visit a few years ago with Chase Fletcher’s parents (Chase is our youth minister), that they told me that even when he was 12 years old he would bring his bible with him on vacation. He was searching for God. They saw it. He had a different spirit in him from the start. That is what makes Chase so special.
The reason I am sharing this story is because I can’t help but express to you the importance of wanting to know the information that exists in God’s word. And it is not just in the knowing, it is in the doing of that same word that a good life here and an eternal life there becomes a possibility. What we want to know matters. The things we think about and the things we desire will define us and shape us for the future moments of our lives.
I have been asking myself since that moment when Luke told me he wanted to know that stuff, what would be on my own white sheet of paper…
What do YOU want to know? What stuff would be on yours?
“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” – Philippians 3:7-10.
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AUTHOR: Jeremiah Tatum
