I have been making a concerted attempt at teaching my grandson a few things about numbers.  Once you get beyond the rote memorization and tedium of the times tables there is an elegance to numbers. We talked about prime numbers, you know those numbers that are only divisible itself and one.  1,2,3,5,7,11,13,19,23,29,31,37,41, and on and on.  As we sat together in my study we pondered this list of numbers.  We were wise owls staring into the night as I explained, “as numbers get bigger and bigger there are fewer and fewer prime numbers and like numbers themselves, they go on for infinity.”

It looked as if his head was going to explode.  Mind you he is getting ready to enter the fifth grade, and the relativity of numbers and infinity itself is some of those things that probably needs to held back to at least the seventh grade.  But it was an introduction.  A beginning of a thought pattern that could well carry through to the rest of his life.

For me, there is a thirst for learning that can’t quite be quenched. There is a little itch that cannot be scratched urging me on.  It is more than a want to just rearrange the ideas and facts of others.  I must find the new, the encouraging, the frightful, the consoling, the special in everything I see.  When I am disappointed in someone or experience a slightly hurtful comment, I go to my special place of wonder.  I look out at the world around me and try to discover something new.  You might well call this escapism, or even an unwillingness to face the reality that people sometimes hurt me without knowing.  But for me, it is better than lashing out or making my own snide comment.

Of all the comments, slurs, circumstances, and disappointments that Jesus went through, I see very few instances of Him lashing out.  Don’t get me wrong, I am no Jesus.  Nevertheless, I think it is just better this way.  I will not waste my pondering on quibbles.