May 21
Mystery of God
“Can you solve the mysteries of God? Can you discover everything there is to know about the Almighty?” (Job 11:7 NLT)
Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse of it while standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, or driving down Highway 1 along the California Coastline or standing at the foot of Niagra Falls. It is everywhere. The grand mystery of God is everywhere you turn. It is in His creation, in the faint sounds of conversation between lovers and in the screech of a newborn baby’s cry. If it is everywhere, why don’t we experience it more?
For some reason, we’ve replaced deep mystery with shallow explanations and cliche answers. We’ve sacrificed knowing God for knowing about Him … and in the final analysis we really don’t know that much about Him. Solomon wrote, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” (Eccles. 11:5 NIV)
Whenever someone asks us a question about God, we rush to answer it instead of pausing for a moment and embracing the mystery found in the question. Integrity is often found in the act of questioning, not in satiating the hunger to know God with a tidbit of information about Him.
In addition to memorizing catechisms and studying theology, every Christian should spend some time contemplating the grand mysteries of the faith. How can man have free will and yet God still be in control? If God is all powerful and loving, why does evil persist? How can God be Father, Son and Spirit and yet be one?
For once, set aside your need to understand and spend time in the spiritual dimension of mystery. And when you do, you will be ready to think about the greatest mystery of them all—why would God send His only begotten Son into the world to redeem a wicked sinner like me?
“Without question, this is the great mystery of our faith: Christ appeared in the flesh and was shown to be righteous by the Spirit. He was seen by angels and was announced to the nations. He was believed on in the world and was taken up into heaven.” (1 Tim. 3:16 NLT)
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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