My son is learning to multiply and divide mixed numbers
(whole numbers and fractions). As I
listen to his mother explain the process, I keep wanting to jump in and help
him understand what he is learning.
"What is 6 divided by 1/3?"
As the boy reaches for answers, I want to jump in with an illustration
that will make this easy. "Look,
let's say there's 3 of you boys playing.
Off in the distance, you see some bigger kids coming your way. These kids throw rocks at you, and you guys
quickly decide you want to have some rocks to defend yourself. You find 6 rocks. Each of you wants as many rocks as he can have, so you have to
divide the 6 rocks, so that each of you get 1/3 of them..." "Now, what if you found 7 rocks? Each kid could get two, and one would get
another, or you could break that extra rock up..."
What I've found over time is, it IS sometimes helpful for my
son to understand in the middle of learning.
However, many times it does NOT help his learning, and it interrupts the
learning process. Sometimes the
understanding part comes best after he has learned how to work the
equation. Now, I can remember hating
this as a kid. I didn't like being
forced to learn things I didn't understand.
To this day, it seems to me that learning/knowing things without
understanding them have little value.
However, as far as the process goes, we are finding that there are many
times that you have to learn and know a pile of things, before you can begin to
understand them.
Stepping back, I'm realizing that this is significantly true
of spiritual things, as well. Many
times I see things happening in my life, or the lives of others, that I don't
understand. And yet, God tells us to
trust Him, to walk with Him, to follow Him in many situations in life that I
have no understanding of. In those
cases, knowing TO follow Him, to trust Him, and knowing HOW to follow Him
matters far more than understanding the nature of what we are going through, or
why things are happening, or how they will turn out. Even if we never really understand the workings of things we have
gone through in this life, it is knowing to trust Him, and how to stay close to
Him that matters the most.
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