Me Speak Little English

I went for my quarterly haircut this month. My barbers are swarthy, bearded young men who open long hours and are remarkably good at what they do. The last one I spoke to hailed from Iraq. I asked the latest where he came from. “I Kurdish”, he replied. I asked him how well he was settling, and was he coping with our constant rainfall? He looked puzzled and then apologised: "Me speak little English". He really did not know what I was asking. Yet only five minutes before, he had understood perfectly well my request for a short back and sides with a Number 2 and an inch off the top. As a barber, he knew those words and terms that he actually needed to know. A polite discussion of weather with an Englishman is not profitable. I suspect that any hairstyle I requested he would have understood. To discuss the vagaries of English weather was superfluous to his needs. He went on to do an excellent job and I paid my ten pounds with satisfaction.

So often, God tells us what we need to know and not what we want to know. He who enjoys sublime communication with seraphim and cherubim, spares us His vast vocabulary, wisdom and eloquence so we might focus on that which is crucial, vital and simple:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Matthew 3:2

The Bible is not a final repository of divine truth, but it is all we need, and all we are getting this side of death.

Image by mostafa meraji from Pixabay