First Morning Thoughts

"When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;

When troubles come and my heart burdened be;

Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,

Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up... To more than I can be.

There is no life - no life without its hunger;

Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;

But when you come and I am filled with wonder,

Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity."

I went for a run this morning, my first morning in Cambridge. Cambridge is actually located in a mid-sized city, with lots of hustle and bustle, even in the early hours of the morning. The rest of my American classmates won’t be here until this afternoon, so I had this morning to relax, to slow down a little.  Of course, I am almost pathetically excited to be here; yet, in all honesty, I was feeling a little overwhelmed. So I set out to explore a little trying to pretend that my racing heart had only to do with the fact that I was exercising.  

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the pursuit of knowledge, and the ascent of mankind into the modern age. Oxford and Cambridge are certainly symbols of learning and its pursuit. As I ran, I thought about the celebration of universities and new discoveries; I turned for my final path across a wide lawn, crowded with bikers, stepped over a small obstruction, and . . . face-planted.  Tripped and fell like a baby deer.  Right in the midst of several onlookers.

Mortified. I was mortified. But something clicked inside of my mind right then and there, as I sat on the ground with my hands gripping the dirt, mud streaked up my forearms.

Pursuing truth and knowledge is a beautiful thing, but at the end of the day, we cannot know everything, answer everything, discover everything that there is to know about life.  We certainly try, but despite our best efforts, we reach a dead end. We fall. We fail. Humans can never know everything—-and that is where faith steps in. For me, faith can be extremely difficult, because I want every question about life to have a neat little answer, checked and proven, tested and tried.  But it’s not.  Faith is about trust, and about admitting that the answers are sometimes beyond human reach. 

Shortly after my run, I happened to hear the song “You Raise Me Up,” and it reminded me this morning that nothing—not myself, not my school, not my friends, not my family—can ever answer or be enough for me or my questions about what life is about.  Only God can be enough, and only He can raise me up.