Questions

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter…
Proverbs 25:2a NIV

I have been asking a lot of questions lately. With curiosity outweighing trepidation, I determined after years of hesitation to traverse that great distance between what born-and-raised Christians seem to know by osmosis, and what I understand. And I have learned a great deal. But I am finding that a subtle price is being paid. I am losing peace.

I don’t think my intentions were wrong. But somehow my motives became skewed. At some point I began climbing a ladder of human wisdom instead of sitting at His feet. My questions became more about “understanding” God than knowing Him. More about reason than wisdom. More about me than about Him. And for the first time, the verse, “Be still and know that I am God” spoke directly to my heart.

I had accepted that God was all-knowing, yet somehow I had never applied that to my own future. God knows all that I have done and thought. But He also knows all that I will do and will think. Somehow, despite myself, He still hears my prayers, knowing who I am. It is incredibly humbling. And it gives one a strange sense of peace, to know that God has seen what is behind every hidden corner of time. Einstein said that, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” How like God, to constrain us in this maze of time, so that we would need to rely upon Him. But He sees time as though looking down on it from above.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.
Hebrews 4:13a NIV

Therefore, that He hides certain things from us is not at all unintentional. It is His will. It is providential. So when we squirm about in our circumstances, searching for reason, it necessarily contradicts His purposes. At least, that’s how it seems to me now that it must be. Even the disciples were sometimes unable to perceive the meaning of Jesus’ words.

The disciples did not understand… Its meaning was hidden from them…
Luke 18:34 NIV

It doesn’t say that the disciples were thick and slow, or that they hadn’t spent enough time in school. It says that the meaning was hidden from them. And, it is to the disciples' credit that they let the matter go. For when we search for wisdom outside of the revelation of God, we dishonor God. As Luther charges Erasmus in his Bondage of the Will:

Why do you not restrain yourself, and deter others from prying into these things which God wills should be hidden from us, and which He has not delivered to us in the Scriptures? It is here the hand is to be laid upon the mouth, it is here we are to reverence what lies hidden, to adore the secret counsels of the divine Majesty, and to exclaim with Paul, ‘Who art thou, O man, that contendest with God?’ Romans 9:20

I like this thought—adoring the secret counsels of the divine Majesty. What has been revealed to us, we may adore. What is hidden, we may adore as well. Since Christ fully satisfies our every need, we should seek wholly after Him. All other speculations are meaningless. Therefore, our curiosity should be sated with Christ, seeking Him alone.

That they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Colossians 2:2b-3