"Love the Lord your God with all your mind."
Mark Batterson begins the section on the Mind of Christianity in his book, Primal, with a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"A mind stretched by a new idea never returns to its original shape."
I love this quote! It makes me think of a balloon that has been blown up and released before it is tied off. You can picture it now I am sure. The pressure of the air releasing causes the balloon to shoot around the room as it falls to the ground. The balloon is now softer and all stretched out. It will never be the same again. This quote parallels our minds to a balloon and air to a new idea.
Mark backs up this quote with a couple of studies that prove the point. One of them takes us to the part of our brain that notices every car on the road that is the same as the one we just purchased. The very car that we would have sworn noone else had...until we bought it. Now it seems to be everywhere! Our mind has been stretched and it is no longer the same.
I have always said that reading and memorizing will cause our brains to grow. A friend even purchased books for my first newborn and wrote in the front cover, "Enjoy the story as your brain grows." A Sunday School class of ladies went in on a gift together and surprised me with a whole collection of books at my first baby shower. My husband has complained about the number of books that my sister and I purchase because there is simply no more room for them. And, yet I know that the more we read and learn the greater our capacity for learning. So, we are having built-in bookshelves built into our new home because I will never stop reading.
This conviction of mine is explained by Mark as the posterior hippocampus. God created us with the ability to learn something new everyday! Mark says, "Learning isn't a luxury; it's a stewardship issue." WOW! Not only is every good teacher a good learner, but seems like every good...growing Christian is a learner.
In Primal, Mark challenges us to continue reading about every subject that sparks an interest in us, to memorize scripture and dig deep. It makes me think of science. Every good scientist asks questions...all kinds of questions, but especially the ones that noone can yet answer. Every good science fair project leads to another project. It simply creates curiousity; a desire to find out more.
What else can I learn about God? What can I discover? What am I missing out on? I love it when students ask me questions that I can't answer. I keep a post-it note on my podium at school and when there is a question that I'm unsure of I will jot it down and then start the search. I ask others that know more than I do. I search the internet. I read books. I dig for answers. It is definitely fulfilling when I can go back to my students and tell them the answer and how I discovered it, because there isn't anything I do that a fifth grader cannot do on their own.
Proverbs 25:2 "God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things."
Mark Batterson says he thinks God loves it when we discover something or experience something that is new to us, even if those discoveries are common knowledge. Just as a parent loves to hear their preschooler say the ABCs or their kindergartener read their first book, God loves to have us discover His hidden riches.
Loving God with all our mind means to continually learn and discover God's hidden treasures.
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