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The Standard of Truth

A few weeks ago a package arrived for us.  We had not ordered anything, but it had our address and Tom's name on it, so we opened it. (We're pretty sure there is only one Tom in our building!)  Inside was a small green tape measure.  Inches on one side, centimeters on the other.  How convenient.  It might come in handy.

Then one day I needed to know the dimensions of our bathtub.  I pulled out our tape measure and measured it.  I was very perplexed.  We have a very large bathtub, but the measurements seemed so small.  I looked up the standard sized bathtub dimensions on the Internet and was even more puzzled.  Our bathtub measured smaller than the standard tub.  How could this be? I re-measured.  No matter how I did it, it was smaller than the standard tub.  I found a notebook that said its dimensions were 5"x7".

When we first got the tape measure I had been suspicious that the inches looked a little bit bigger, but without something to check it against, I just assumed it was right and disregarded the suspicion.  I mean, how could it be wrong? It was a ruler!  

There is a life lesson here. Standards cannot be changed without end results changing. We need a standard to check our beliefs and experiences against. If only for one day people who work for Google maps changed north or south, the results would be disastrous.  And we would be forever frustrated with the "standard sized bathtub" if there were different sizes of 'inch'.   We are so dependent on those truths being fixed and unchangeable.  

This reminds me of a conversation we had with Wang Jian.  After seeing this sign:
Tom explained to him that it didn't make sense because the letters were not in the right order.  WJ's response?  "It doesn't matter.  It's the same thing."  He doesn't understand that English works very differently from Chinese and that it does matter.  Without the word 'hair' there, you have no way of deriving meaning from it. Just because he doesn't understand the truth, doesn't change the fact of how you spell 'salon'. The same is with life.  Just because we do not know or understand all of the truths and divine laws, does not make them any less true.  

While many in this world claim that we define our own truth, truth is something that cannot be changed. Our greatest success in life comes from learning and applying as many divine truths as we can.  I'm thankful for the unchanging Standard of Truth.  Jesus Christ. 

Thank you to whomever sent us a tape measure, having a visual of an imperative life lesson is a treasure! 

Two notes:  1) The centimeter side is accurate.  2) Tessa ordered a crochet kit for 10￥.  In it was another tape measure (different style and length). Guess what?  It measures just like the green one.  Now I'm on the search for an accurate inch measuring device here in China; I'm curious if I can find one. In the mean time when I want inches, I'll just have to convert. (Which is another fascinating related concept.)

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