I made an oft-hand comment on the blog yesterday: “All of that should be obvious, but what’s obvious to one person isn’t always obvious to another.”

I was remembering something that happened when we first moved back to the States after living in Argentina. We were living in a church-owned home next to the church building. One day our air conditioner stopped working. When the repairman came, he pulled a completely clogged filter out of the system. He was amazed to discover that I didn’t know that central air units have a filter that needs to be changed regularly!

I’d never changed the filter at home growing up, nor seen anyone do it. For the next 20+ years, I lived either in housing managed by others or homes that had no central air. I’d never even seen an air filter before then! The repairman had no way of knowing that a man over 40 wouldn’t know about air filters.

In a similar way, I remember preaching once on the promises made to Abraham out of Genesis 12. I had a man, who had been a Christian for over 20 years, come to me and say, “I’d never heard that before.” I never would have guessed that any Christian adult would be unfamiliar with the promises that are so central to our faith.

We hesitate to teach basic things because they seem too obvious. Yet we often need to hear just that.

photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com