There’s nothing like a 1040 form to make a non-mathematical person like me feel dim-witted, especially on a day when I had already been through one other brainless episode.

The first began innocently when Klaus dropped by to spend a couple of hours. I asked if he could teach me how to email a pdf document to someone, and he said, “Sure. No problem.”

An hour later, I was still practicing, working on my sixth try without success. After each failure (accompanied by groans of defeat) Klaus would patiently say, “Let’s try once more. You’ll get it this time.”

In the end I had to write down every step in order: “Look on the left of the screen; click on the 4^th option down; a purple box will appear; scroll down to…” etc.

When Klaus would say, “Just fool around with it a little and try several things,” I felt like a hitchhiker being pushed out of a car in the Sahara Desert. I know I’ll get it someday, maybe even the next time I try, but without Klaus in the house, results are bound to be mixed.

Later the same day I was sitting with a tax expert at her H & R Block computer, thinking the only thing I’d be required to do was watch her work. How was I to know she was going to ask so many complicated questions?

It doesn’t take much for some of us to feel incompetent. That goes for spiritual things, too. Maybe especially for those.

Sometimes when studying the Bible I feel thick-in-the-head, unsure of what God is trying to say to me. But there’s more to it than just not understanding what a passage says. It also can be intimidating to open Scripture with the goal of trying to get “inside” the logic of God. That can feel really awkward or uncomfortable.

But what might his perspective be as we’re reading and studying… a trying? I’m just guessing, but I’d say he’s probably smiling, appreciating our efforts, even those that end with only partial understanding. Thankfully, he’s always been a Person who looks at our intentions rather than the results. (1 Samuel 16:7)

And intelligence probably has very little to do with it. Even feeling brainless is ok. After all, if a child can understand much of what the Bible says, nothing should stop the rest of us from trying, too, even those of us who feel dim-witted in front of a 1040 form.

“The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.” (Psalm 14:2)