A few days ago I jotted a short post about ‘Knowledge’ quoting a few lines from Boice’s commentary. The subject was so broad and I was very conscious that I had so lightly touched upon it and I half-wondered whether I could really justify posting something that was so ‘imperfect’ and incomplete. But I’m glad that I did because I found the theme arising and developing as the week went on – and the very process of writing and posting helped keep me alert to it.
I find myself experiencing this sense of the Lord affirming the blog posts though, in the actual process of posting, I have these questions about the purpose. Is this right? Is this helpful? Isn’t there more that needs to be said? But then other things happen and it’s like the Lord is affirming what I’m doing: “Throw up the post; Step out in faith and see what happens” is how I might express it.
I say ‘other things’ because there was a small incident which occurred and I noted it in my weekend sermon (which was on 2 Samuel 23). But usually it will be something that I read or a book I came across. The book that has come to my attention since my blog post has been ‘Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity’ by Brian Rosner. Brian is the Principal of Regent College in Melbourne. His book was published in 2018 and I ‘stumbled upon’ it through a footnote to an essay by Rosner as I was reading in preparation for a sermon on Samuel. At present I’ve only read snippets of the book but what I’ve read so far has been very stimulating and worthwhile. What I have been aware about though is that it was the ‘little post on knowledge’ which sowed the seed and led to me searching further rather than letting it pass.
Rosner also reminded me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poem ‘Who Am I?’ with its stirring final stanza. That poem has stayed with me ever since I first heard Robert Forsyth read it out at a Sydney University Evangelical Union conference in the mid 1980s:
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!