‘I Do Not Know’

‘I Do Not Know’

And her parents were astonished: but he charged them that they should tell no man what was done.

Luke 8:56

The rabbis of Judaism have a saying upon which they expound: ‘Teach your tongue to say, “I do not know.”’  This is sound advice, regardless of your religious persuasion. When we come to our text for today, we find that Christ does something that we would consider odd. After He has raised the little girl from the dead, He then, ‘charged them to tell no one what had happened.’ Why did He do that? Well…we do not know. When handling the Word of God, we have to resist the urge to, ‘tell more than we know.’ We could speculate or make something up to spiritualize the action, but where would that get us really? The fact is, Christ raised the little girl from the dead and instructed these most grateful people to be utterly silent about it. What can we draw from this? At the bare minimum, we must conclude that we are always going to see Christ do some things that we are not going to understand. This is very useful toward enabling us to be content. It also touches upon our ability to trust Christ, that He knows what He is doing, in spite of the fact that we do not understand. This also aids us in our contentment. We find great joy and contentment knowing that we do not have to know and understand everything that Christ does, or tells us to do. We can be content in knowing that He knows and that He does ‘all things well.’

Our Wise and All-Knowing Savior,
We rejoice that You know all the things that we do not know.
We praise You that we may trust You
to do good in all these things.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning