March 22, 2011 – Sirach 43

The awesome power of God in nature.  The power of the sun, the precise movements of the moon, the beauty of a rainbow, all done by the power of God.  Still, I like how in the end it says ”Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of his works have we seen. “ 34.  Granted this was written before Christ and we have discovered many things in the world since then, but can we really say anything different.  There are places on this Earth still never explored by men let alone in the universe.  What is the percentage of the universe that we have seen, let alone can explain.  With that in mind we still have people claim it is all random or that there is nothing above humans or that we are like Gods.  What arrogance does a person have to think we know it all when there is 99% of the known universe that we haven’t even seen.  There are more things that we don’t know we don’t know than there are things we know. 

It makes you wonder about the knowledge that has been lost.  There is a lot written about history and we know some of what is in our past, but imagine all the knowledge that has been lost.  There are many who may say that any knowledge from the past is obsolete to our “brilliant” minds of today and our technology.  Do we really look around and see that knowledge has increased the peace in the world.  Has knowledge and technology increased our morals.  Or have we forgotten things that we thought held us back.  If we have forgotten lessens and morals that people had 100 or 200 years ago, what knowledge has been lost from before then.  How much do we lose to arrogance and the idea that I must do it on my own, to the notion that we must reinvent the wheel.  It may not have been the case in the past, but I feel today we look at the past with a smugness that may not have been there before.  We feel that history is boring, old fashioned, slow and unimportant.  We think we have all the answers and they are better answers than anyone else in the history of the world has had.  I just couldn’t disagree more.