Why God gives us exactly what we can carry (Patience in making Spiritual Progress).

Have you ever tried to explain something to a child, only to stop yourself mid-sentence? Maybe your five-year-old asked where babies come from, or your seven-year-old wanted to know why Grandpa isn't coming to Christmas anymore. You knew the full answer. You had the words. But something in you recognized that the whole truth, delivered all at once, would be too much. Not because the child was stupid, but because they weren't ready. So you gave them a piece of the truth, a fragment sized to fit the shape of their understanding, and you trusted that one day you'd be able to say the rest.

This is not deception. It is love.

And it is exactly how Jesus relates to us.

Have you ever tried to teach a child to ride a bicycle? You don't begin with a lecture on physics, explaining angular momentum, gyroscopic precession, and the coefficient of friction between rubber and asphalt. You begin by holding the back of the seat. You run alongside them. You let go for two seconds, then three, then five. And when they finally ride on their own, wobbling down the driveway with a wild grin, they have no idea how much you were calibrating every single moment to what they could handle.

This is not a failure of teaching. It is the very art of it.

And it is precisely how God works with us.

There is a moment in the Gospel of John that, once you truly hear it, changes the way you understand your entire spiritual life. On the night before his death, Jesus gathers his closest friends around a table, washes their feet, and begins to pour out his heart in what we call the Farewell Discourse. And then, almost in passing, he says something stunning:

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12, NRSV)

Stop and sit with that. The Son of God, the Word through whom all things were made, the one in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, looks at the people he loves most and essentially says:

There is so much more. But not yet. You are not ready.

This is not a rebuke. It is not disappointment. It is tenderness.

It is the restraint of a love so profound that it would rather wait than overwhelm. Jesus does not say, "You cannot bear them ever." He says, "You cannot bear them now." The word in Greek is bastazein, which means to carry, to bear up under a weight. Jesus is telling them that truth itself has a weight to it, and that there are truths so immense, so heavy with glory, that they would crush a soul not yet prepared to hold them.

And so he gives them what they can carry. And he promises, in the very next verse, that more is coming.

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." (John 16:13)

The fullness will arrive. But it will arrive in the Spirit's time, through the Spirit's patient leading. Not all at once, like a flood that destroys, but gradually, like a dawn that lets the eyes adjust.

 

A Glimpse Before the Valley

This same pattern appears in one of the most mysterious events in the Gospels: the Transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, and there, before their eyes, he is changed. His face shines like the sun. His clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, speaking with him. And the voice of the Father thunders from a cloud: "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" (Matthew 17:5).

It is a moment of pure, unfiltered revelation. For a few breathless seconds, the veil between heaven and earth becomes tissue-thin, and the disciples see Jesus as he truly is. As St. Thomas Aquinas noted:

...In order that anyone go straight along a road, he must have some knowledge of the end: thus an archer will not shoot the arrow straight unless he first see the target. ...Above all is this necessary when hard and rough is the road, heavy the going, but delightful the end. ...Therefore it was fitting that He should show His disciples the glory of His clarity... to which He will configure those who are His... Hence Bede says... "By His loving foresight He allowed them to taste for a short time the contemplation of eternal joy, so that they might bear persecution bravely."  (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q. 45, Art. 1)

Aquinas reminds us that God does not reveal His glory merely to impress us, but to provide a "target" for our weary eyes. By catching a glimpse of the finish line, we find the strength to endure the grueling stretches of the race. This intentional timing—offering a vision of the end before the trials of the journey begin—serves as the necessary bridge between our current confusion and the ultimate clarity of the Cross.

But notice the timing. This event does not happen at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, when it might have been most impressive. It happens after Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, and immediately after Jesus has told the disciples, for the first time, that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised (Matthew 16:21). The disciples are shaken. Peter has just rebuked Jesus for saying such things. The road ahead is about to become unimaginably dark.

And so Jesus gives them a glimpse.

Not the full revelation. Not a permanent dwelling on the mountaintop, which is exactly what Peter wanted when he blurted out his offer to build three tents and stay (Matthew 17:4). Just a glimpse. Just enough glory to sustain them through the suffering that is coming. Just enough light to carry into the valley of the shadow of death.

This is the pedagogy of God. He does not give us everything at once. He gives us what we need, precisely when we need it, in the measure we can receive it.

 

Milk Before Meat

The apostle Paul understood this pattern deeply, because he himself was a practitioner of it. Writing to the Corinthians, he says:

"And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food." (1 Corinthians 3:1–2)

Paul is not being condescending here. He is being pastoral. He recognizes that the community in Corinth, riddled with division and immaturity, simply could not metabolize the deeper mysteries of faith.

They needed foundations first.

They needed the basics of love, of unity, of the crucified Christ. The more advanced realities of the spiritual life would come, but only as they grew capable of digesting them.

The author of Hebrews makes a strikingly similar observation: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food." (Hebrews 5:12). There is a gentle frustration here, yes, but also an acknowledgment of a spiritual principle: growth must precede depth.

The roots must go down before the branches can go up.

 

Why This Matters for You

Here is where this truth stops being merely theological and becomes deeply personal.

Many of us live with a quiet frustration in our spiritual lives. We wonder why God seems silent. We wonder why the Scriptures that once seemed so alive now feel dry. We wonder why our prayers seem to hit the ceiling. We look at other believers who seem to have experiences of God that we do not, and we feel left behind.

But what if the silence is not absence? What if the dryness is not punishment? What if God, in his infinite wisdom, is simply giving you exactly what you can carry right now?

As St. John of the Cross explains, God nurtures the soul in its infancy but must eventually change His approach so the soul can grow:

"He makes it to find spiritual milk, sweet and delectable, in all the things of God, without any labour of its own, and also great pleasure in spiritual exercises, for here God is giving to it the breast of His tender love, even as to a tender child." (St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Book I, Chapter I, Section 2)

Consider how this works in ordinary human development. A medical student does not perform open-heart surgery in the first semester. A pianist does not begin with Rachmaninoff. A marriage does not reach the deep, quiet intimacy of fifty years on the wedding night. There is a process, a becoming, and each stage is real and necessary and dignified in its own right.

The spiritual life works the same way. There are seasons of consolation, when God's presence feels near and warm, when prayer is easy and Scripture leaps off the page. These are often given to beginners in faith, not because beginners are more holy, but because they need the encouragement. They need the taste. Like the Transfiguration, it is a glimpse of glory designed to sustain them for what lies ahead.

And then there are seasons of apparent dryness or darkness, when the consolations withdraw. When God seems far away. When the soul feels barren. This is not regression. It is, paradoxically, a sign of progress. St. John of the Cross teaches that this transition into the "dark night" is the necessary step toward spiritual maturity:

"...but, as the child grows bigger, the mother gradually ceases caressing it, and, hiding her tender love, puts bitter aloes upon her sweet breast, sets down the child from her arms and makes it walk upon its feet, so that it may lose the habits of a child and betake itself to more important and substantial occupations." (St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, Book I, Chapter I, Section 2)

By setting the soul down to walk on its own feet, God is weaning it from spiritual milk. He is inviting it into a deeper, more naked faith that does not depend on feelings or experiences but on sheer trust. He is preparing the soul to bear truths that are heavier, richer, more glorious than anything it has yet known.

 

Living in the "Not Yet"

So what do we do with this? How do we live faithfully in the space between what God has already revealed and what he has not yet shown us?

First, trust the process. If God is giving you milk, drink it gratefully. Do not despise the season you are in. The basics of faith, the simple prayers, the foundational truths of God's love and Christ's sacrifice, these are not elementary in the sense of being unimportant. They are elementary in the sense of being elemental. They are the bedrock on which everything else is built.

Second, remain faithful in the ordinary. The disciples did not earn the Transfiguration by performing spectacular feats. They earned it by following Jesus up the mountain when he asked them to. They showed up. That is often all God requires of us: show up to prayer, show up to Scripture, show up to worship, even when it feels like nothing is happening. Especially when it feels like nothing is happening.

Third, do not compare your journey to anyone else's. God is a master teacher who gives each student an individualized curriculum. What your neighbor needs to learn right now may be entirely different from what you need. The Spirit guides each of us "into all the truth," but the path is unique for every soul.

Finally, hold your unanswered questions with open hands. "I still have many things to say to you." Those words are not just for the twelve men gathered around a table in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. They are for you, today, in whatever confusion or longing or dryness you may be experiencing. Jesus is saying to you: There is more. So much more. And it is coming. But for now, carry what I have given you, and trust that I know exactly when you will be ready for the rest.

The God who holds back is not a God who withholds. He is a God who gives perfectly, precisely, and with a patience that will one day take your breath away when you finally see what he was preparing you for all along.