Spring break

I counted the weeks til summer.
"Oh, we need to work in a spring break," I told Asherel.
She glanced up from a particularly pesky Algebra 2 function problem.
"Oh, do we have to?" she whined.
"Yes, you have worked very hard this year. All work and no play is not healthy."
"I don't want to stop our school days which drag from morning til night. What could be more fun than spending two hours on difficult math concepts that even you and dad cannot explain?  And why would I want to stop those beautifully painted images in words of the starving Jews as they freeze to death in Siberia? If we don't learn history, Mom, we are doomed to repeat it."
"I know dear, and all of that is indeed critical, but it is ok, even valuable to take time for relaxing."
"Mom, there is already too much knowledge to absorb in a single lifetime. I would prefer we just increase our school hours. ... not take a spring break. In fact, could we just move on to 9th grade and work over the summer? How many advanced classes do you think I should take?"
"I don't know. Maybe you should enjoy your fleeting childhood."
"Oh Mom, don't be silly! There is nothing, nothing more enjoyable than the privilege of learning, especially under so fine and well versed in all areas a teacher as yourself...."
"But you have had so little sleep this year, up so early every morning, and all that extra work on Science Olympiad which you had the misfortune to do well in so that now you have to work even harder to prepare for the State contest."
"Mom, I can sleep when I am in the grave. Now is the time to seize every moment of education my excellent brain can absorb. God has not given me this gift of intelligence only to squander it on Mario Cart or Rock Band."

At this point, I awoke.

We are indeed in the enviable position of needing to schedule a week off. The rest of the conversation above is a literary genre known as "complete fabrication." Sometimes my daydreams merge with reality and I have trouble discerning which is which. I remember a very convincing lunatic once messing with my brain and laying out rock solid logic for thinking dreams are the true reality and our waking moments only a dream. I had the same dismaying sense of losing my mind when I first began to truly try to understand the concept of eternity, or infinity, or for that matter, consciousness. There are so many concepts we toss about as though we can grasp them when they are impossible to understand.

It is ironic that the most impossible concept to grasp, an eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent God addresses this issue of imponderables in the Bible. And what does He mention that can never be understood?

¹⁸ “There are three things that are too amazing for me,
   four that I do not understand:
¹⁹ the way of an eagle in the sky,
   the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
   and the way of a man with a young woman. (Proverbs 30)

Eagels, snakes, ships, and love. Those four great imponderables.  I have read this verse probably thousands of times....yet I never paused to say, "Of all the things that we limited humans cannot grasp....why are these 4 the great imponderables?" Honestly, I have not got the foggiest notion. I suspect the author didn't get out much. Maybe he needed a Spring break too. The key usually is in the subtle meanings of specific words. The writer doesn't understand in each case, the "way". The word 'way', in the earliest translations is the hebrew word 'derek', and it means a course of life, journey, mode of action, a road or path one trods.

Is this the same "way" as in Jesus 14:6, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me."? Well, one is Hebrew and the other is Greek. The "way" to Jesus is from the Greek word "hodos" and it means mode or means for a journey, or progress. In both cases, the mode of action is what is at question.  It means primarily the course or highway, but can also mean a way of thinking, feeling, and deciding. I think that helps me understand why the author of Proverbs found those 4 seemingly simple things imponderable. Understanding the Eagle's decisions in the path he chooses to fly, or the snake's thoughts that prompt him to choose that rock rather than another, or the captain's choice to steer his ship around that wave and not the next, or the thoughts that prompt a young man to choose one woman over another......

I think maybe it is the course of our decisions that guide our choices, be we eagles, snakes, or God-seekers that is so imponderable. Ultimately, any way about it, a path is chosen, and the Way to life in the Bible is abundantly clear.

"Could we find a way to go to NY city for spring break?" asked Asherel.

Joshua 3:4
⁴ Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before.
Deuteronomy 29: 2-4
   Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land. ³ With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those signs and great wonders. ⁴ But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.