Psalm 119:100 Functional Lead

I'm not a functional lead.

The actual functional lead is someone who has more technical knowledge of Oracle Peoplesoft programming than I do. She knows more things about the "guts" of the program than I ever will.

But even she has to frequently defer to the programming specialists in the IT department, the people who are educated as programmers. They're able to actually dig into the code and fix problems or enhance performance deep in the system.

And yet there are many things I understand better than any of those people do about how the system actually functions on a daily basis in the particular institution where I work.

The first day the hospital went live with Peoplesoft, a friend in IT called me. As the person who managed the servers, he was alarmed at the massive spike in the load being put on his machines. He didn't understand why the hospital needed to run the receiving process hundreds of time a day, including spurts when the process was being run every minute or two.

Because I spent over twenty years working on the hospital receiving dock, I was able to help him understand the need. Day after day of rushing to process medical supplies so I could deliver them to the medical people who needed them to care for patients had given me more than head knowledge. It gave me intimate, personal understanding.

When the people in those patient-care departments call me and ask why their personal list of favorite items no longer functions properly, I don't even have to pause to think of the answer. I've been building items in computerized inventory databases for over 30 years, and I've personally entered every piece of information regarding about 70% of the items in our current database. I spend part of every day updating item records when the information changes.

My experience physically handling hospital supplies on the receiving dock enables me to understand the information I'm entering into the item master database. The combined physical and technical experience helps me to answer the requisitioner's questions quickly, accurately, and in a way that makes sense for their needs.

My supervisor has told me she dreads the day I retire. It's not because I'm some sort of genius. It's because I have decades of experiential knowledge stored in my brain. Someone else can be hired who has their own knowledge base and their own accumulated experiences. And I've accumulated hundreds of documents of detailed notes about the things I know. But they won't have my personal knowledge of the history of why we buy this particular product instead of that one, based on issues that arose and decisions that were made 20 years ago.

Deep understanding requires more than knowledge. It comes only by living within the framework of that knowledge day after day, over a long period of time.

I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.

Psalm 119:100

True meditation begins in the Word but continues in the world. Only by obeying - by intentionally living out each day within the framework of God's revelation - can anyone achieve deep understanding of God's ways.

It's great to study everything the Bible says about grace and mercy, memorizing verses, assembling them into a systematic framework of theology, and even teaching others to understand those teachings. Greater still is struggling through life as a sinner, learning to rely wholly on His grace and mercy. Full understanding comes by not only learning to accept and embrace grace personally, but by stretching out of your comfort zone to extend that same grace and mercy toward others, accepting and embracing people who are imperfect.

I know people who can expound extemporaneously for hours about the scriptural doctrines of baptism, and yet they lack full understanding because they have precious little experience in actually planting seeds that lead to people asking the question, "What must I do to be saved?" What's the point of knowing the detailed answer to the question if you never put yourself in the position to be asked the question?

I don't want to settle for being a scholar of the Word. I want to understand the Word by obeying it.