I didn’t write anything to post last week because some weeks are much heavier than others… And in the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Last week, we had a guest speaker (and by guest, I mean someone other than me – our ‘guest’ is not a guest at all, but a regular member (and by member, I mean someone who attends the Bridge and calls it home – we don’t have actual membership, like with cards and special handshakes) who happens to be a gifted speaker) who spoke about the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. The question he asked, right at the very start, was one that opened me up and took me apart. What do we do with the head knowledge we have?

We can know all the Bible verses, and not have a transformed life. We can, to paraphrase Paul in his 1st letter to the Corinthians, have all of the gifts, know all of the things, have an alphabet after our name to go with an entire wall of diplomas, but if we don’t have love, none of it means a thing. We can have all the head knowledge, but if our theology doesn’t jump the shockingly wide chasm to our hearts, what good does it do anyone? The process moves us, he said, from a passive study into an active integration. He said, “Heart knowledge has legs,” which reminds me of the saying, “Love does.” Love implies an action, not just some gauzy feeling from rom-coms and music videos. We learn the tenets and those tenets must transform our character, emotions, and decisions or they’re just an impotent intellectual pursuit.

So, I thought about the last few weeks, where my life was rattled, tested, and my heart was broken, again and again. I know the Truth, but when crushing stress was applied, what is the Truth/truth I truly know? I can know and recite 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter: Love is patient, Love is kind…) by heart on command, but when I’m late and the car in front of me is 15 mph under and I’m really hungry and my electric bill is due and my car is touching the E, am I patient then?? Am I kind? I know love doesn’t keep record of wrongs and isn’t easily angered, but there might be things I remember that the Angel or my sister or my mom or my 1st grade teacher said (or did) to me years ago that hurt me then and hurt me now when I think about them, they might still make me mad and I might be waiting for the perfect moment to bring them out. I can know the right thing, the ‘right’ answer and choose another path. I can know but not know.

I think we need this sort of time, these sorts of weeks, to expose who we are, what we know, and to actually see what we’ve been doing with all of our head knowledge.

I remember a man I know who struggled with addiction nearly all of his life, and one night, his sobriety was severely threatened. We all know what to do here: reach out and scream HELP!!! to someone you trust. But we all do the opposite, we close the doors, hide in our pride and shame, and wish the demons away. He didn’t. He called me, talked for an hour, and his sobriety stayed mercifully intact. More than knowing what to do, he knew what to do.

What I learned is that I’m not the same person I was 40 years ago, or 20, or who I was last week. I learned that I am beginning to know. Immediately after a particularly nasty, vicious, well-placed, well-timed attack, I picked up the phone. We are created to reach for someone, not to do anything alone – I have known that for a very long time, but it’s only fairly recently that I know that.

We don’t have to jump all of those chasms today, sometimes it takes a million tiny baby steps, and we can (and will) still choose the wrong paths from time to time, but we keep moving, we’re going somewhere very significant. And when we get and take the opportunity to look around at that ‘somewhere very significant,’ we find that He has been faithful, that we have become new, and that we are awfully grateful.