Optical illusion

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct thy path.”

I wrote that from memory. I learnt the verse as a child. It is found in the book of Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5&6. It admonishes us to trust less in our natural senses. Actually it says not to trust at all in our natural instincts rather we should look to God for solutions and for deciphering the puzzles of life.

But what do we do? We do what we know how to do best. We reason. We court logic. We indulge common sense. We smooch our mental faculties till we climax with ingenious formulas that would fix the problem. What brilliance! We soon become masters of the game.

We plot. We scheme. We concoct. We collude and machinate. We call it ‘being smart’ and proactive. And when we wear our religious hats and cloaks, we say quite simply — and without even a blink of an eye, we declare, ‘this is wisdom.’

After we have created our minions and set in motion our genius, we boast with all sagacity that the Lord has spoken. After much pondering of thought, we claim the Lord led us to this amazing intelligence. Say, didn’t He give to us our minds for reasoning?

We have forgotten too quickly that He admonishes… lean not on your own understanding.

So when the fall comes, it comes with a bang. And a heavy thud. And we break a limb or two or lose a tooth or nail. Catastrophe. Backfire. Calamity.  Tragedy. They become the titles of our sordid stories and experiences with being masters of the game. The sorry endings brought upon ourselves because of a fruitless expedition.

The inevitable recompense that comes from being victims of an optical illusion. A mirage. After all the scheming and plotting, we come to realise in the end that it was nothing but a figment of our imagination. We lose. We crawl back to Abba with our tails between our legs. Remember Jacob and learn. Cunningness comes with a price.

Proverbs 14:12
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. — KJV

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct thy path. — NIV