Daily Encouragement: Day 216

From Handbook to Wisdom, Day 216

ALL TRUTH COMES FROM GOD

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
(John 1:1–2)

There is but one God, the Father,
from whom all things came and for whom I live;
and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom all things came and
through whom I live.
(1 Corinthians 8:6)

Imagine someone from an illiterate culture who stumbles upon a New Testament left inadvertently by a traveling missionary. The native picks up the strange object and brings it to the elders of his village, but since they have never heard of reading or writing, they are unable to discern the meaning of the mysterious black markings on the pages. They may even come to revere the alien object, but unless an outsider comes and explains it to them, the living words it contains will never be more than dark squiggles on a gossamer white substance.

Our world is like that book; unless an Outsider explains it to us, we will reduce its glory to the impersonal forces of time plus chance, or we will worship the creature rather than the Creator. But this is a failure to grasp the higher levels of meaning—the markings are letters, the letters combine into words, the words conform to grammatical principles and form sentences, the sentences convey ideas, the ideas lead to aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual truth, and all truth comes from the infinite-personal God.