Pastor's Corner

“Educated Guess”

There are some things in life that just don’t make sense. For example, why do we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway? Sometimes people don’t make sense. A child is often confused when he sees a person shedding tears of joy. Why would a person cry if he were happy? Sometimes, the misunderstanding can be dangerous.

I mentioned in one sermon about a confusing experience that came to a friend of mine. Mitch Hoogendyk was a lieutenant in Placer Hills Fire Protection District in Northern California. One day, he entered a burning house intending to extinguish the fire. He crawled toward the flames, and opened the nozzle on his hose. But it seemed like he was pouring gasoline on the flames instead of water. When he sprayed water on the fire, the flames leaped up even higher. When he stopped the flow of water, the flames went down a bit. This did not make sense to him.

Before long, he came to realize that there was a crawl space under that part of the house. Since the house was on a slope, part of the crawl space was almost like a basement. Flames were not actually coming from the floor. They were coming from beneath the floor. When he sprayed water on the flames, he was creating a gust of wind that drew in air from the crawl space and caused the flames to leap even higher than before. He had to change his technique as he understood what was happening.

Sometimes, we have no idea how to work with the information we see or hear. At such times, we often have to make educated guesses. We cannot be sure if we are right or wrong. But past experience causes us to lean one way or another. We can do a better job of this if we systematically discard options which are least likely. When I was an English teacher, I had a special opportunity to teach a vocabulary class. No such thing had been offered in this school before that term, so I had to make my own materials. On one quiz, I gave an opportunity for students to practice educated guessing. I gave a bonus question with multiple choice answers. The word was, antidisestablishmentarianism. There were four choices for the answer. Among the wrong choices offered was the definition, “a person who refuses to eat cheese in church.” One or two students actually selected that answer. I was surprised and amused. Would there really be a word in any language that had such a meaning? But then I realized that such an answer provided a little peek into the minds of those students. They probably believed that English is a bit quirky, and a goofy language might just have such strange meanings represented by single words. Am I thinking similar thoughts? What is the first thing that comes to my mind when something bad happens? Do I blame God? Do I blame the Devil? Or am I willing to see other options? Am I willing to take responsibility for the problems I cause?

I have come to realize that there are some things that will never make sense to me while I live on this earth. I can make educated guesses as to what is really going on. But I do not have to be upset at God when things go wrong. I can still trust Him while I continue to seek understanding about the things that don’t make sense.

Sincerely,
Pastor Glenn