But I Still Don’t Understand!

Yesterday…

…The oil light had kept coming on in our car. For anything mechanical or technological I’m clueless. I opened the bonnet, found the dipstick, established that there wasn’t sufficient oil…

At the local petrol station there were ten different sorts of oil. ‘How do I know which sort of oil I need?’ I asked the helpful assistant. ‘Look at your car’s manual.’

I took the manual to the selection of oil products. The numbers and letters on the oil labels bore no resemblance to anything in the manual. I googled my question. The answer? 5W-30.

Back at the petrol station there are three different sorts of 5W-30 – one for Fords, one for BMWs, one for Peugeots… Our car’s a Nissan. I bought the cheapest…

I still don’t understand!

…Learning that almost 28,000 people didn’t attend their GP appointments, each month, in our area. There’s a huge financial cost: £1.17m  of taxpayers money goes to waste. There’s the significant human cost: each no-show represents another patient who could have been seen.

I don’t understand how so many people just don’t turn up…

…Christians across the world celebrated the ‘Feast of the Holy Innocents’. The Wise Men visit Jesus. Herod gives orders for all baby boys in Bethlehem to be killed. God protects Joseph, Mary and Jesus as they escape.

I don’t understand how anyone can murder children, then or now; I don’t understand how a God of love protects one and not others…

…Reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. It’s 1850s Kentucky; a young man is speaking ‘for the cause of God and humanity’ to a slave trader:

‘…heartstrings rent and broken – the weak broken and torn for the profit and convenience of the strong! (This story) needs not be told; every day is telling it – telling it, too, in the ear of the One who is not deaf, though He is long silent.’

170 years later… has much changed?

Today musing… I don’t understand – machines, people, and the God who sometimes appears silent.