– Vickie Ripley, GMUMC Lay Leader
I recently saw a quote by Maya Angelou that read “Do the best you can, but when you learn better, then do better”. I’ve thought about that a lot and there’s truth in it. We do the best we can at the time with the knowledge and experience that we have. Our behaviors as children are different than when we are adults. We grow up and we learn better – about how to treat people, how to have compassion, how to expresses manners in society, how not to offend people, how to handle disappointments, and the list goes one. We develop patience and tolerance as adults, and then it’s our job to teach that to our children – how to live and grow and learn, and that the world is not all about them.
I realized that our understanding of God grows and matures, too. Then, I thought, but God does not change, so how does that work? Well, Paul deals with that in 1 Corinthians 13: 11-13 when he said : “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror: then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”. God continues to reveal himself to us if we will only listen. But sometimes he says things we don’t want to hear. He wants us to know more about him. He already knows about us.
So, it is true that God does not change, but we do. We grow spiritually if we learn from and about God by reading his scripture, spending time with him in prayer, and being in communion with him, as well as with other Christians. One important way we learn about Jesus and how to be a Christian is attending worship services and really listening to the prayers, the liturgy, the hymns and the sermon. I think sometimes of the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, and wonder if they continued to grow in their knowledge and relationship with God or did they just keep on doing what they had alway done and believed. They did not appear to be open to the revelations of Jesus who showed that people could actually have a relationship with God and that he changes hearts. In some ways, it’s much easier to follow a rule book, and expect everyone else to follow the same rules. That doesn’t require much thinking.
So hopefully, as we learn better, we do better – to learn God’s will for us and discern his directions even when it is not what we used to think it was.
Vickie