October 9: Curious Events Day

 

Where do crop circles come from?  Is the Loch Ness monster real?  How many galaxies are there?  How did God actually create our universe?  Why do children instinctively pick their noses?  Please don’t misunderstand that I think all of these things are on par with one another.  Obviously not.  But they all beg the question:  Why are there so many seemingly unexplainable things in our world? 

I want to challenge you with something today.  Pick one unusual or curious event.  It can be part of popular culture (Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle) or it can be something more germane to our faith (The bodily resurrection of Jesus, creation), and then do some homework.  Study.  Investigate.  Carefully check sources.  Read some books or memes or articles.  There are some very good reasons why we should devote some time to this.

First, it will sharpen our critical thinking.  Oh, how we desperately need this in the household of faith!  We are lazy thinkers, lazy prayers, and lazy apologists.  We need to learn how to navigate the maze of information available to us, and distill it down in to useable, bite-sized pieces that we can share and disseminate. 

Second, there is a reason why humans are naturally curious.  God, and sin.  Our curiosity is a “leftover” from The Fall into sin, recorded for us in Genesis 3.  We were made to look into things, to investigate, to follow the leads.   EVERY GOOD THING THAT GOD MADE WAS DESIGNED TO DRAW US TO HIMSELF AND THRILL US WITH HIS GLORY.  One of the great tragedies of The Fall is that our natural curiosity was corrupted.  Rather than seeing all things as a means to the end of glorifying God, we pursue them as ends in themselves.   One of the great joys of Heaven is that we will continue to investigate and learn, but all our learning will end in the greater glory of God and our greater joy in Him. 

So, give it a shot today, even for the next month, or year!  Dedicate yourself to plumbing the depths of some curious event, something about which the jury remains out.  Do so prayerfully, asking God’s Spirit to re-awaken in you some vestiges of the minds of our perfect first father and mother, Adam and Eve.  Let it whet your appetite for the day when the second Adam, Jesus, will invite us into a world where every search ends in God's glory and our perfect good.  Be curious!