What You Need to Know

There's something to be said for keeping some information close to your chest. I say that not referring to being overly private or snobbish but because I just watched the newer BBC version of Jane Austen's Persuasion, for the second time, and I noticed something for the first time.

Between sipping my vanilla ice cream and banana milkshake that my daughter made for us, and being wedged in between my husband and daughter and Harry, who was lying on my feet, I suddenly saw this issue in the movie- this sub theme having to do with what we know and what we don't know.

People, back then, had a certain decorum when it came to releasing information or news. There was a certain timing to when you shared things and how you released the news, and this was seen as a good thing. You didn't just announce to the world at large certain updates in your life. No, there was a certain timing for when you'd share with a larger audience what was going on in your life, what was going on in your heart, even.

This did cause certain problems though. In the case of Captain Wentworth and his undying love for Anne Elliot, because he was misinformed, "utterly misinformed" about his conclusion that she was going to marry her cousin, his hope for declaring his love to her (for the second time) was dashed to smithereens- for a brief moment. He was wrong about what he thought was going to happen because while nobody had announced Anne's engagement to her cousin, society had seen the signs of a pending union and had intimated that it was to take place.

Dashed hopes occur when you think you have no chance of something you long for. But you just might be misinformed about the situation. It seems to me that while God is not particularly known as as having a style of 19th century behavior, He does tend to keep certain information close to His chest, close to His heart. He doesn't just share any old thing with you, whenever you want to know it, for whatever reason you think you need to know it.

God discloses certain needed information to you at just the right time. The thing is, the Right Time is His time, and its not tied in with common societal expectations, social customs, or anything like that. For the most part, we have no idea about what motivates Him to share important information with us. We've heard He is motivated out of love to guide and help us and answer our prayers. But God is also a God of wisdom. Wisdom has to do with timing, strategy, insight, knowledge, perception, discretion...shall I go on?

How much insight and knowledge can we actually handle? Apparently we can handle little of it. We'd like to be worthy of God bending down and sharing secrets with us, but we may not be ready for God to share too many things with us. It could cause problems for us because we're not ready to know what God knows about us and what God knows about our future.

So I sipped my frothy banana shake last night and contemplated how God might just love me so much that He is telling me little. And when He does disclose certain needed information to me, He loves me that much too.

He always knows just what I can handle.