I Do Not Know
November 07, 2023
There are several bald spots on my metaphorical head from metaphysical head scratching. Mind baffles have frequently made me drowsy to the point of stupor. Not everything adds up because, to embrace everything, one must also embrace unknowns and unknowns challenge our sense of control and self-sufficiency.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.” — Psalm 139:6
Sometimes, the right answer is, “I don’t know.”
“Yet in the midst of my madness, God had been making himself known to me in profound ways. In my drunken prayers, God’s presence was ever-captivating. My journal would reveal tears of desperation and longing for God. I couldn’t reconcile the fact that I was doing something wrong and the fact that God was showering me with love. I have a tendency to view life in terms of black and white, good and bad, happy and unhappy.. I was finding life to be filled with shades of grey and God ruled over it all. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t have all the answers.” — Nathan Foster, “Wisdom Chaser — https://amzn.to/3u759hC
I was not prepared for turning the page to 105, chapter 13. You’ll have to read it yourself, but you may find your story there. You didn’t know anyone else had lived it. You were making such progress with God, in so many areas, but there was something, a drag, more than a drag, something yanking you down.
Not all progress is steady and it is seldom neat … usually very messy.
Mystery. What sort of God is this? Job thought he knew Him but realized he knew only OF Him. When they finally met “face to face,” it was not to impart all the answers to this faithful servant. The truth was in the encounter. The reconciliation was in the relationship.
Every day of our lives, we are surrounded on all sides by knowledge we do not possess, swimming in a sea of wonder, marinating in questions we do not know to ask. We possess less understanding than we will have tomorrow, but vastly less than the universe holds — much less the God of the universe.
We can skip some steps and slip through a spiritual wormhole emerging, through folds in space-time continua to that lace on the other side of the creation where we can meet the God who knows and bends reality to His own purpose.
But we still won’t know everything.
And climbing will still involve struggle.
And we will have some bad days, some very bad days … and some good days … and some that don’t seem to fit any category at all.
But if we keep climbing we will find we are going somewhere. Along the way, some of the answers will be clearer. At the summit, there willl be a very clear perspective.
I am convinced that the Somewhere and Someone of it all are worth the climb and I have chosen to continue. Who will go with me?