Faith--Where Understanding Falters

Frequently we speak of things we don’t understand⎯and they are infinitely innumerable: for life is a process of searching and seeking, with a little finding here and there and with much need of faith to carry us over what we haven’t yet found.

Men have made many things. We have made machines that can do what men can’t do. We have discovered some of the laws of the universe, and have observed some of the processes of nature, which we have learned in part to apply to our own purposes. We have learned to conquer some diseases, to lengthen life; to endure and to survive sorrow and separation (but not to eliminate them from our lives).

We recall the questioning of one who had suffered a sudden and severe loss, who uttered over and over: “I cannot understand it,” and then pleaded “If I could only understand it.” But if we had to eliminate from our lives everything we couldn’t understand, we should have to eliminate much, including life itself. Sometimes it seems we little understand even ourselves.

And much as we may have discovered and much as we have made, there is so much more we haven’t discovered and so much more we haven’t made. We haven’t made a blade of grass as yet, nor a single cell that can grow and reproduce itself⎯not the simplest cell.

Of course there is much we cannot understand. There is much that our children cannot understand concerning us and the purposes we urge upon them. The medicines that parents must at times administer are not understood by the child. But he takes them because he trusts the purpose of his parent.

Likewise there is much that we must accept with faith in our Eternal Father. We have to rely on Him for so many things; we have to trust Him for so much: for the sustenance of life, for the recurring seasons; for the inner intricacies of our own physical functioning; and even for life itself⎯and it is but a small thing further to follow in all things with faith where our understanding falters.