Cultural

Cultural                February 2017

We are immersed in, surrounded by, and affected by cultures of which most of us are unaware.  Computer programming, medical research, codes of conduct for gangs, subterranean utilities, and police enforcement, just to name a few.

For example – Reef, Pipes, Swamis, Moonlight, Beacons, Grandview, Ponto, Jetties, Dip in the Road, Terramar, Power Plant, Tamarack, State, Buccaneer. If you are a surfer, you know these are the names of the surfing beaches going from Cardiff to South O. Because some of them have signs now, you might know a portion of these names.  Fifty years ago there were no signs.   My sister, whose last name was also Bekins, told some boys that Beacons was named after her.  With those big brown eyes, who could doubt what she said?

Police officers know things that they would never tell us.  We couldn’t handle it.  And don’t ask what physicists grasp!  The situation in the Middle East is so far beyond any reality reported by US media that the soldiers serving there just laugh about it.  Yet, we are under the influence of all these realms every day.

In the same way, we are surrounded by the enormous, living spiritual world where names of entities and beings are unknown to us. The Bible does give us some of these characters and places and concepts, but the details are far more vast than its 1,500 or so pages.  So we turn to God for our understanding.  And He, like the policeman, will only tell us what we need to know for this day’s assignment.   He has seen our beginning, our end, and everything in between.   We are uncertain about what lies beyond the horizon of our time and territory.   Because He loves us unconditionally, He reveals to us just enough, so that we may perform without fear.   He knows what we do not need to know yet.