Love Desires Knowledge...


“Love desires knowledge, and knowledge serves love.” (Frank Sheed, from a speech in 1957)

When we “love” someone (“love” being the action word, not the fuzzy feeling), what do we want of them? What do we desire of those we love? Probably many things, but I'd say primarily it could be boiled down to “getting to know”, or “knowing” them. Getting to know, and knowing, them serves the love we have for them. And the more we love them, the more we want to know them...and the more we know them, the more we understand of them to love, so to speak. I believe this is mostly true of just about anyone.

So, how much desire do we have to know God? Can our hunger for “knowing” God be any indicator for how much we “love” Him? Or what of our efforts to “know” Him? And if there is any truth to what this suggests, then how shall we go about getting to know Him, if we realize we have not done a fair job in doing so? Allow me for a moment to turn “knowledge” into “food”, and a “hunger for knowledge” into “hunger”.

“Not on bread alone does man live, but by every word that proceeds form the mouth of God.” said Jesus to the devil after His 40 days in the desert and the subsequent temptation the devil presented Him with. As Mr. Sheed put it, “Revealed truth, then, is food. Now it is a peculiarity of food that it nourishes only those who eat it. We are not nourished by the food that someone else has eaten. To be nourished by it, we must eat it ourselves.” (Sheed, Theology for Beginners, p.4)

And where do we find these words that proceed from the mouth of God? Crack open that Bible! ;-)

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