Yada... to learn by experience... What a word! And what a curious life we have been given to live understanding it. When we are young, we are taught in classrooms and by parents who have lived out many experiences. They share their knowledge with us, but for their knowledge to become understanding, there needs to be experience.
Faith is often taught by theology and ancient stories, but for faith to become real, it must be experienced. It must be questioned and tested. It must be seen and experienced. Why else would the word be used so often in the Bible? Why would God speak it to the ancients but tell us that knowledge is all we need today?
Yada, yada and more yada...
In today's vernacular, this phrase is added to the end of a story that is either boring or everyone knows. But to the Hebrew, it was the power of the story. And to me, it is the essence of the story. To understand what a person has experienced is to go beyond the facts and into the reason. When I discover the reason, I then discover the person.
The Bible is our tool to discover the yada of God. Our story is the tool to discover the yadda within ourselves. It shows us our character, our true self. The way we learn and the way we love. It's where we discover our design and how we are shaped. It's where we see how life has worked (or not worked) for us. It's also where I have discovered God. To learn His design and His character is to see Him, love Him, and connect with Him. It is not boring or a story everyone knows. It's a story that we get to script and to live—learning from our experiences and going where we have not gone before.