Remember It for a Rainy Day

“When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.” (Joh 2:22 AV)

Our LORD had just been challenged regarding a sign of the temple.  He said to the mockers that if they tore down the temple, He would rebuild it in three days.  The LORD, of course, meant His resurrection.  The mockers, on the other hand, went on mocking.  The disciples had learned to listen to the words of the Savior with ears of attention even if they did not understand what they were being told.  Obviously, the LORD did not mean the physical temple.  Even though as God He could clearly rear a building in three days.  He created the entire universe in six days.  So, one trifle of a build wouldn’t be all that difficult.  However, knowing their Master as they did and the custom of the Rabbis to teach in allegory and parable, they understood He was not referring to the physical building.  They would not comprehend this saying until the witnessed His resurrection.  What we want to consider is the practice of the disciple to retain even that which he did not understand at the moment for the purpose of greater revelation down the road.  In other words, the disciples did not cast aside something they did not understand simply because they did not understand it.

A movie came out that was a box office hit.  The story was about this young man who was dropped off at an older man’s house to learn the skills of martial arts.  Many know this movie.  It had several sequels.  It was called Karate Kid.  This young man lived with the older master.  The deal was to obey him to the last detail and he would make him a champion fighter.  The old master would have his young apprentice perform menial tasks and appeared not to take the time to teach his young student any new martial arts skills.   This young man, Daniel, is learning to paint fences, garden, and waxing his master’s car.  The famous line everyone remembers is, “Wax on, wax off.”  Daniel is slowly getting frustrated.  He is under this elder’s tutelage because he was beaten rather badly by a gang of martial art students who didn’t accept this newcomer from the east coast.  Finally having enough, young Daniel loses it with Miyagi, his teacher.  He throws down the towel he was using as a polishing cloth refusing to do any more housework.  Miyagi simply says, “Defend yourself.”  As Miyagi advances on Daniel, the repetitive tasks of painting or waxing the car instinctively took hold.  Soon, Daniel realized all he had learned, even if he didn’t understand it, came into use when the right time arrived.

We are learning machines.  We take in information all day long.  From this information, we learn facts.  From these experiences, we shape our worldview.  The challenge is to retain even that which we seem to think has little or no value.  We judge something by the ease of which it can be understood.  If we cannot seem to grasp the significance or application of information, we tend to discard it.  The disciples were disciples because they recognized the value of that which they may not have understood.  The Master speaks and even if I cannot get it the first time around, I will try to retain it because eventually, it will become clear.  Jeremiah was truly good at this.  I took note of things knowing there is nothing random.  He sought to understand the meaning of that which he noticed.  The same is true of the twelve.  Countless times they asked our Savior to explain a parable or the purpose for what they witnessed.  They were natural students.  They wanted to learn.  This is required of the true disciple of Christ.  He must be a student of the Mentor or he will learn very little.