Just One Word: Understand

Understand

Lora Parsons

The Ashland Beacon

In the world of English Language Arts teachers, there are three recognized reasons for writing. One is writing to demonstrate learning where you show your teacher what you learned. The second is writing to communicate where your purpose is to inform or persuade an audience. And, the third is writing to learn where the writer is also the student figuring out what he or she thinks about a topic as they go through the process of writing about it. This month I have a word in mind. I’ve thought about it for weeks. But, I don’t really know what I know about it. Yet. We’re going to figure that out together as I write without knowing the point, hoping that we get somewhere good in the end.

The word that’s been rolling around in my head the last few weeks is “understand.” Maybe it’s kind of ironic, then, that I don’t understand where this thought is going. I find that the two word parts that combine into one cohesive meaning sort of feel like opposites to me. The first part, “under,” suggests something lower, while the second part, “stand,” shows upward movement. The words work opposite of one another, which intrigues me. I’m also intrigued by the idea that our understanding of an issue, topic, or idea lies beneath the way we react to that belief or idea. For example, my reaction at Lowe’s today when we couldn’t purchase the patio set we wanted was altered when the store clerk said those sets are ordered a year in advance. That helped it make sense that a store could be out of an item, the item could be out of stock on their website, and, yet, they also couldn’t sell the floor model. It may come back in stock, but the fact that it had to be ordered a year ago makes them unable to determine that now, some 365 days after their initial order. They’ll sell floor models toward the end of the season. I understood the reasoning behind not selling the floor model once she shared that tidbit of information. It changed my reaction to the situation.

The difficult part of understanding, however, is that we don’t always have the benefit of that reaction-altering piece of information. We are not meant to understand all of the complexities of God. He has an understanding far beyond ours, that informs the specific instances in our life that we see from a very limited perspective. When bad things happen to good people, we don’t understand. Trusting wholeheartedly in the good nature of our loving Heavenly Father has to supersede our desire to understand all things. I can accept that because I understand my limited humanity.

While that is a difficult place to get to, I think in some ways, because we do see our own humanity, there’s an even greater difficulty in understanding some of the good qualities of God. To fully understand the truth of His love for us is further beyond comprehension in my mind than the paradox of bad things happening to good people. It’s so easy to see our own flaws, to give energy to the doubts in our mind, to question our own motives, to critique our reactions, words, and reactions to others. We often see the good in others much more easily than we see the good in ourselves. The most difficult kind of forgiveness to give someone is the forgiveness that has to turn inward. The realization that that is even more difficult to understand has in some ways almost made it easier to understand that He does just love us. As much as I can’t understand the age old question of bad things happening to good people, I also still sometimes find it even more difficult to understand just how much He loves me.

The beauty is that I don’t have to understand His love for me in order to trust His goodness any more than I have to understand why tragedy exists in the world in order to understand the same. He is love, and He is good even if I never understand. The truth is, I WILL never fully understand because I’m human. But, His seat as God does not rest on my understanding.  He is still good. He is still God. He loves me—and you. And none of those things rely on our ability to understand them. They just are.  That, I do understand.