Thoughts On: John 3:9-15

Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

John 3:9-15, ESV

At twenty years old I decided to get dreads. I now see how silly and unnecessary this was, but at the time I had a lot of pain to deal with and not a lot of decent coping mechanisms, so I dealt by having someone purposefully backcomb my hair into forty chunks of unmanageable mane. I hated it immediately, but l kept a good face for about five weeks, until finally I decided that the gig was up and I wanted out. 

I began by trying to comb out the dreads on my own. I had a family-size bottle of conditioner and three different hairbrushes, and I had a deadline. I needed to be back at school within 36 hours, and no way was I going back with half a fuzzy head, so I became manic in untangling my own hair. After a while, though, I lost patience. Even a slight snag in my comb would cause a chain reaction of anger and muzzled cuss words, and so, at six o’clock the night before I needed to head back to Anderson, I wrangled my dad into detangling my mistake. 

My dad stayed up until 2am that August night combing out my hair. He didn’t tug too hard and he even let me cuss a little. We watched four movies to get us through, and he went through more than half of that bottle of conditioner. By the end of it, I had a tired father and a ball of hair the size of Connecticut to show for his time. I went back to school with a light head and a thankful spirit, and to this day, I think that process is one of the most moving pictures of the Gospel I have experienced. 

I’m a lot like Nicodemus in this text. He asks so many questions, and it takes him a while to trust. His question has been the cry of my heart during the last six years of tossing and turning and dealing with my faith and my past: “How can these things be?” I didn’t understand.

I think the problem, before I decided to center my life on Jesus, was that I thought I could figure it out. I thought that if I took enough time and energy to devote to the confusing questions that somehow everything would make sense. And that’s the problem, the lie that creeps in: I can untangle the mysteries on my own. 

But just like I couldn’t untangle my own hair, I cannot untangle the stubborn mysteries of life. And just like my dad took the comb and handled my messy head, Jesus took the questions from Nicodemus and gave him the truth that would soothe his mind: Only Jesus can untangle the mysteries.

Tonight this means going to bed in peace. Instead of opening up old wounds, or new wounds, or trying to figure out why my life looks the way it does right now, I will go to sleep and know that God takes care of all things, and that I can rest knowing Jesus understands the things I am still questioning. Someday there will be answers, either in this world or another, but for now, I will rest easy. God's got the comb, and all will be well.