Scripture reading: Matthew 20:29–34

The Man Who Discovered England

Do you have eyes but fail to see? (Mark 8:18)

Over and over again in the Gospels we see the spiritual blindness of those who were closest to Jesus. The Son of God was preaching and performing miracles just a few feet away, and yet most people failed to recognize who he was. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him (John 1:10). How can someone fail to see the Light of the World?

The story of the conversion of G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) gives a graphic illustration of how human wisdom simply cannot find God. Raised and educated in philosophical modernism, Chesterton labored to create his own world view. Assuming that he was wise enough to figure out the meaning of life, he dabbled in the fads and trends of his day, seeking to piece together his own unique religion. But his search for truth led him to where he never expected to go!

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas . . . I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England . . . I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before . . . This book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last.  It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious . . . I am the fool of this story . . . I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it . . . The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. (Orthodoxy).

Chesterton found the meaning of life only when he humbled himself, acknowledged his ignorance, and submitted to the revealed truth of God as found in the Bible. It was only when he admitted how blind he was that he began to see. Chesterton discovered that truth is not something we make up but rather something that God sends down. The one thing he could not explain (God and his Word) became the means through which he was able to explain everything else!

Friend, perhaps you are seeking the meaning of life. Maybe you have tried, like Chesterton, to create your own truth, define your own realities, make your own religion. Let me encourage you to give up such silly notions and let the light of God’s truth penetrate your darkness. Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls (James 1:21).

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot

point to ponder • Only those who are truly humble are truly teachable.

prayer focus • Intellectuals, that their wisdom would take them far enough to realize that they in reality know nothing.