Part of the family service involved solving riddles. People were very good at these! See how you get on!
Riddle 1
What is greater than God,
more evil than the devil,
the poor have it,
the rich need it,
and if you eat it, you’ll die?
Riddle 2
What has eighty-eight keys but can’t open a single door?
Riddle 3
You draw a line. Without touching it, how do you make the line longer?
Riddle 4
The Smith family is a very wealthy family that lives in a big, circular home. One morning, Mr. Smith woke up and saw a strawberry jam stain on his new carpet. He figured out that everyone who was there that morning had a jam sandwich. By reading the following excuses, figure out who spilled the jam.
Billy Smith: “I was outside playing basketball.”
The Maid: “I was dusting the corners of the house.”
Chef: “I was starting to make lunch for later.”
Who is lying?
The reason we were solving riddles is because the word used in 1 Cor 13:12 to describe our view through a mirror (in the KJV it talks about seeing ‘through a glass darkly‘) is ‘enigma’. Paul says that all we can see and know and experience in this life now is a little bit like looking in a mirror. Just as the image he would have seen in those ancient mirrors would have had a blurred or undefined outline, such is our knowledge here and now. Matthew Henry says in his commentary on these verses ‘All things are dark and confused now, compared with what they will be hereafter. They can only be seen as by the reflection in a mirror, or in the description of a riddle; but hereafter our knowledge will be free from all obscurity and error. It is the light of heaven only that will remove all clouds and darkness that hide the face of God from us.’ Barnes says of the idea of an enigma or riddle: ‘Little is known; much is left to conjecture; a very accurate account of most of that which passes for knowledge. Compared with heaven, our knowledge here much resembles the obscure intimations in an enigma compared with clear statement and manifest truth.’
Life here can be baffling and confusing, but we can take heart from the fact that God is in complete control, knows everything and is working all things together for good. We don’t need to solve all the enigmas of life. Instead, we are called to trust God and to rest in the fact that we are fully known and fully loved by Him.
P. S.
The answers to the riddles:
1. Nothing
2. A piano
3.You draw a shorter line next to the first line, and it then becomes the longer line.
4. The maid. (It was a round house, so there were no corners to dust…)