God is the answer. But God does not give all the answers. I used to think that since God is Truth my questions would be satisfied as I studied about Him. I have grown in my understanding of many things as I mature spiritually, but that which I don’t understand has increased even more. He is mysterious, not because of what I don’t know, but because of what I do know.
Experiencing loss and pain creates questions and magnifies those we already have. Yet in that, I have been met with His grace and comfort beyond anything I can explain. I begin to glimpse God’s awesomeness, His bigness, (although I can never capture how big) and I realize there is much that I don’t know. The mystery remains, the questions unanswered, and I am increasingly comfortable with that. In fact, it is even comforting as I think about a God too wonderful to be boxed in and defined.
Kay Warren, in a recent podcast with Tim Timmons, said it this way:
Hope without mystery is untested faith
Mystery without hope leads to bitterness
You have to have both
She talked about her own grief process in losing a son and it seems that grief of one type or another is a common, if not necessary, path to accepting God’s mystery and the unknown of His ways. As Job found out, God doesn’t owe us an explanation. But because I trust in His character, in who He is, I can rest in Him. Because I have His hope, I can have peace in the midst of questions.
There is much that I do not know – and much of that that I will never know. But embracing, even relishing, mystery is a joy because my God is bigger than my understanding. And I’m grateful for that.
How do you handle mystery, the “not knowing” of life?
Then Job replied to the Lord:
“I know that You can do all things;
no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures My plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. Job 42:1-3
