This Old Dog

A thing being learned over and over again is something that I have always heard, but seldom realized how much truth there is in this word which tells us there is always something to be learned.  Or, to paraphrase a saying heard since a boy, "An old dog can learn new tricks."  While I have not arrived at graduation yet, I am in this season of my life learning how to write not just prose, but even some poetry and the birthday gift of a mandolin has put me in that classroom as well.  

However, the biggest lessons I have learned since walking away from the pulpit in retirement are new ways of understanding and knowing God in my life.   It is surely a strange think to admit.  After all, I was early on in my faith journey blessed with a theological education that resulted in a Master of Divinity degree.  Over the years I have accumulated four sets of Biblical commentaries, a seven volume set of John Wesley's writings, a shelf full of books on prayer, and more books on the spiritual life than I want to count.  I have been a teacher of the Bible and a preacher of over forty years of sermons.  

I reckon if anyone should be near to not having anything new to learn, it would be me.  Yet, the truth with which I am learning to live is that there is more about God that I will never know than I know.  The word which keeps coming back to me again and again as I respond to the spiritual stretching of my heart is the word "Mystery."  It took retirement for me to slow down enough to realize what so many learned so much earlier and that is the truth that to walk with God is to walk in mystery.  To seek Him is to embrace the reality that there is always something new ahead of us and with this in mind, I am grateful that God is still willing to teach this old dog some new things.