A Wrinkle in Time

Due to feedback I've recently gotten, I'm ashamed that I've just now read A Wrinkle in Time. Most people read it when you were supposed to: in elementary school. But no worries. Even though I am a brand new adult, the magic of this classic was not lost.

One of my favorite characters was Aunt Beast. Meg and her entourage arrive on Aunt Beast's planet embattled and at a crucial leg of their journey. Meg soon realizes that Aunt Beast and the other "beasts" on the planet have no distinction between dark and light. They have no eyes and cannot see.

Aunt beast says this, "we do not know what things look like, as you say, we know what things are like. It must be a very limited thing, this seeing." What an amazing truth! And it takes me back to my friend Marri's Donald Miller inspired "what if" blog post:

What if I stopped seeing people and started looking at who they are?

What if I stopped seeing things or tasks as boring or bland but starting knowing them as opportunities?

What if I stopped limiting myself through seeing through my own tiny lens and instead freed myself through knowing the big picture?

Not knowing what Jesus and His grace looks like to me but knowing who He really is?

I always see myself in the books I read. And this time especially, I saw myself as Meg. She's got major faults, she's impatient, she's got awesome siblings. But our strongest similarity-- she's so inquisitive. She has to understand. Things don't make sense. Things will never make sense to her until they are understood.

But what Meg learned and what I'm learning is that isn't true. That doesn't have to be true. I will never truly understand some things in life and Meg will never truly understand the Black Thing and why or how it works.

But as L'engle writes, "you don't have to understand things for them to be," or as Meg's mom wisely says, "but you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist."

That gives me a peace.

That peace that can come even when my understanding doesn't.

Which brings its own understanding, doesn't it? In what's sort of a twist, when I can't obtain "human" understanding, but I have a peace, then my understanding becomes so much greater. I stop having to digest and analyze every detail or dissect everyone's actions-- and can start seeing the big picture.

Meg must save Charles Wallace from the Black Thing.

And I am saved by grace.

I have been given grace so I can extend it to others.

And there really is nothing more to understand. How freeing is that?