You'll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God's master stroke, I didn't try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.1 Corinthians 2:1-2
The older I get, the less I know. When I was a kid, the world was a much simpler place with fewer problems, fewer questions, and fewer attempts at answers. That was then.
I've discovered that, while life is hard and fast, the answers are not. I find that all the things I thought I knew the sure answers to "then," now have so many angles, perspectives, backgrounds, and exceptions, that I'm completely at a loss for figuring them out or being totally sure in what to do about them (If you don't believe me on this, find a teenager to raise). While I do believe in absolute truth, we humans are hard-pressed, if not completely incapable, of finding it.
Here's a prime example. Amazingly smart, academic, accomplished, studious, Bible reading/studying theologians can't agree on anything. There are hundreds of teachings in the Bible that every scholar and teacher has a different perspective on, based on their own experiences with God, their formative teaching, and their Bible college/seminary instructors who taught them through their own tainted glasses.
In a world of gray, amid this complex universe created by an unlimited God, there is one black and white truth that we as believers can all depend on together. We can stake our very lives on it, no exceptions. It is the one thing that is sure, unchanging, settled, and exactly what we have all learned and understood it to be in the most simplest of forms. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, and offering immortal life to all who believe. That's it. Nothing ever in the creation of the world and all of its unfathomed complexities, shifting tides, and untapped knowledge will ever be as profound and yet, no-brainer simple.
Maybe when life was so simple to figure out as a kid, I did get it after all. Maybe that's why Jesus said we had to be just like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven full of pure, simple, undefiled faith in one simple truth.
The older you get, and the more you realize that, like the rest of us you really don't know much of anything, there is that one thing you can count on always and forever. Jesus. King of the ages.