Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
(Proverbs 3:5-8 rsv)

There is no doubt you've heard the aphorism “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. Sometimes I think it is equally true that a mind is a terrible thing to use (terrible: exciting or fitted to excite terror or great fear, dreadful, awful, distressing). Just as the failure to develop the human brain can be tragic, so can its overuse. In the post-Darwinian world of the last 150 years, the demand to know the workings of the world has been constant, increasingly broad, and never satisfied. Along with this ever-expanding hunger for knowledge comes anxiety. Once you set on the path to know everything, you are bound to be disappointed and restless. For me, especially when it comes to studying the bible, and by extension trying to figure out why things are the way they are—the course of history, the explanation for evil, the destination of humankind, our ultimate destiny—the quest for answers inevitably leads to doubt, frustration, and at times terror. It is so hard for us to accept when we decide to admit that we just don't get the answers to our questions. We can read for ourselves that people three thousand years ago were asking the same questions about the nature of human existence that we are asking today, in the Psalms for instance, but yet we can still find ourselves praying: “I know, but I'm special, you can tell me.” Why God decides to intervene in the lives of the very few and not in the vast majority is another thing we will never know in this life. And so all we can do is pray for the peace to accept our lot, and bear it until that time when we can enter his presence, his light, and our illumination.

I have located a prayer composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., the famous man of letters of eighteenth-century England, written on this very subject. This prayer was composed by Johnson at age 75, four months before his death.

Against Inquistive and Perplexing Thoughts

August 12, 1784. O Lord, my Maker and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world, to work out my salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands and consider the course of thy providence, give me grace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while it shall please thee to continue me in this world where much is to be done and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous inquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted, let me serve thee with active zeal, and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest, shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
 

Contributed by David
Monday November 28, 2011
Liturgical Year A: Week 52
Liturgical Color: Green
Sunday Gospel reading:
Lectionary 34 (Proper 29)
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost