DAY 107 - THE FEAR OF THE LORD
MILANNA MARTILLARO, CREATIVE/PRODUCTION TEAM LEAD
“...if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” - Proverbs 2:3-5
For as long as I can remember in my adult and adolescent life, I have had an insanely high “need to know” factor. I ALWAYS feel like I want complete knowledge and complete understanding. I remember driving my mom crazy when I was little by how many times I asked the question “why?”. Which when answered, was almost always followed by another “why?”. My high “need to know” has definitely not always worked out super well for me. I knew about Santa way too young because of my relentlessness (if you still don’t know about Santa, ask Zach and he’ll tell you). I’m impossible to surprise, I have ruined too many surprises to even count (sorry to anyone involved, it’s the thought that counts). I have googled the ends to movies and tv shows due to my insufferable inability to wait to find things out (I know this makes me the worst). I think in some ways, I have almost made my life harder because I am constantly trying to be aware of everything and have complete understanding of the things going on around me.
Well, it’s safe to say, my ability to understand what’s going on around me right now is slim to none. I’d say probably all of ours is. Right now, we are all sitting in a time of a lot of uncertainty, and maybe your “need to know” factor is on a whole new level. Maybe you need to know whether or not you’re gonna have a job in three months. Maybe you need to know how much longer this is gonna last. Maybe you need to know that your family or your loved ones are gonna be okay.
Let me just say, I am with you. It kills me to not be able to understand what is going on around me, to not have clear knowledge of what is happening. Trying to even wrap my head around all this is nearly impossible. I have spent hours upon hours praying for understanding. Asking the Lord to just give me a clear sense of wisdom for what this is, or even what life looks like after the smoke clears. And after countless requests of “Lord, give me understanding!” I came upon this verse in Proverbs which says that if you seek understanding, that if you are desperate to find understanding, so much so that you seek it like hidden treasure, what you will actually uncover is this fear of the Lord.
This is huge.
This means that the more we try to understand, the more we seek knowledge and wisdom and complete comprehension of this world and our lives, what we actually will uncover is the immense greatness of our God. This means that in times like this where we are desperate to know what is going on, or what is gonna happen, or when things will go back to normal, what we really need to know and understand more, is the fear of the Lord. To treat our pursuit of God the way we treat our pursuit of knowledge like it’s a hidden treasure.
Let that change your perspective during this time, young adult. Loosen your grip on trying to understand what is gonna happen with all of this, and give way for a desperate, relentless “need to know” factor for who God is.