Why are Cows' Nostrils So Big?

"Your illustrations always point out just what's wrong with me: it's chapstick, and chapped lips, and things like chemistry."

There's so many things I don't know.

This is what I've learned so far in college. So many people in this world are smarter and more learned than I can ever even hope to be. And there are still things that they don't know anything about.

"Recognizing the vastness of the world and its holdings, the shortness of our life, and especially the weakness of our powers, we are saddened by the thought that perhaps we shall never truly know anything unless, contrary to possibility, we could know everything." --Leon Kass.

That's how I feel. Like I can never ask enough questions to get satisfactory answers. Like I can never be satiated by limited knowledge, and so I'm doomed to forever long for what I can't have-- endless knowledge. That feeling, when one of my questions has been answered, is the best feeling in the entire world. I don't get that feeling often enough. And even when I do, more often than not the answer slips through my ears ten days later. I'm right back where I started.

Sometimes it's so incredibly frustrating to be human. The finite-ness of my mind is the bane of my existence. I just want to know. I want to know everything. What does "time" mean? How could God have no beginning? Through what process does a lump of tissue (my brain) perceive written messages in the world around it? What are dreams, really? Where do they come from? How do tiny atoms we call DNA carry information on them? Is the primary influence on humans nature, or nurture? How does the mind attach abstract ideas to meaningless sounds? Is there life on other planets? How do they get the tootsie in the center of a tootsie pop? In the deepest place of my soul, who am I? What does Heaven look like? Why was I born in the United States, and another girl born in Rwanda?

I can never get the answers to all of these questions. If I could answer even one question fully, that still leaves 48,046 more that need to be answered, and by then I'd be 204 years old and ready to die anyway.

I trust that God has the answers to all the questions I have, and the ones I'm not even smart enough to consider. I just wish I had the answers too.

So this is what I've discovered at college: just how much I really don't know, and will probably never find out.  Which is pretty discouraging. But I'm going to do my best to work hard and find out the answers to the questions that are within my grasp. Though it is finite, at least I have a working mind to use. And I hope to use it for the glory of the One who created questions and answers, and holds every single one of those in His intelligent hands.

Vanessa ((