Jesus doesn’t get us alone and explain things to us all the time; he explains them as we become able to understand. Other people’s lives are parables: they show us certain truths, but others cannot walk our path for us. God is making us spell out our own souls, so that we may come to our understanding honestly, through our own experience.
God’s ultimate aim, in asking us to do this work, is to shape us for his purposes. It is slow work, so slow that it takes him all of time and eternity to accomplish it. We must let him guide us through all the nooks and crannies of our characters. It is amazing how ignorant we are about ourselves! We don’t recognize envy when it is inside us, or laziness, or pride. Jesus reveals these things to us. He reveals everything we’ve been hiding before his grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look in with courage?
We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves: it is the last bit of conceitedness to go. Only God understands us. If we ever get a glimpse of what we are like in his sight, we will never again say, “Oh, I am so unworthy,” because we will know we are, beyond having to say it. As long as we aren’t quite sure, God will keep cornering us until he gets us alone. He’ll wound our pride, take us to the limits of our intelligence, break our hearts. He’ll show us where we have loved unwisely, or too much.
Only then, when we are truly cornered and alone with him, will he begin to explain.
