incomprehensible

Last week in Bible study we covered this rather-difficult-to-put-in-a-nutshell truth: God is incomprehensible.

Several times while I was reading the material, I caught myself thinking, Duh. Of course God is incomprehensible. This is obvious. Why do I need to read about it?

Oh, the irony of thinking Duh in response to the words “God is incomprehensible.” That reaction is exactly why I needed to read about it.

If you know me or are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have made it my life’s work not only to know God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, but also to make His Word accessible to others so they can know Him, too. But God is incomprehensible—and that makes this whole errand seem, at face value, rather foolish. I can know God in a measure sufficient to walk in relationship with Him and to whet my appetite to know Him more, but I will never know Him entirely, even with an eternity ahead of me to try (let alone in this life).

The more I meditated on God’s incomprehensibility over the last week or so, the more I noticed two internal reactions surfacing: first, frustration; then, humility.

Frustration that I have read the Bible front to back many times over, and still barely skimmed the top off its riches of wisdom. That I’ve studied under scholars, both formally and informally, and can’t even hold all of that information in my mind at once—when there is infinitely more out there to learn. That I—a person who finds great security in facts and knowledge, turning every anxiety into a deep-dive of research and logic to soothe my fears—will never know God fully. Not in this life and not in the next. Never.

I know Him enough to know that this isn’t a frightening truth. But it is a frustrating one. I can imagine myself sometime in eternity future, still trying to plumb the depths of His character, and the deeper I go the deeper He gets. I suppose it will be something like trying to travel to the edge of an ever-expanding universe.

But after the hot swell of frustration came that gentle friend, Humility.

The incomprehensibility of God has humbled me to the point of wondering how I have ever made any but the most basic and absolute claims about who God is and what He is like. How we could ever try to color Him inside any lines—denominational, political, cultural—or stuff Him inside any box? I keep thinking of the entire book of Job, in which Job and four secular philosophers wax eloquent on how God would definitely do this and never do that, and God’s response is, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

What if my denomination isn’t the one doing it “right”—it’s just doing it right in one small way, while the others do it right in other ways, together forming a kaleidoscope of glimpses of God’s glory? What if my political values aren’t “right”—they are just one valid way of looking at many complicated issues, and there is more than one way to love my neighbor with my vote? What if my cultural blinders keep me from seeing and accepting and celebrating how differently God might be working in people and places who are very much unlike me?

If I have learned anything by meditating on God’s incomprehensible nature, it’s that I know far less than I think I do about God. I don’t know which church He’d go to, which style of worship He’d choose, which candidate He would vote for, or whether He really still calls people to obedience through dreams and visions. What I do know is that He is good, and that He is King, and that all of us are probably wrong about a humbling portion of the rest of our most-cherished beliefs.

now I'm a mom

I just started going to a ladies’ study through the book None Like Him by Jen Wilkin, and the first chapter is all about the fact that God is infinite—necessitating the acknowledgement that I am not. One of the discussion questions was, “What God-given limitation or boundary do you most want to rebel against?”

I had a hard time with this question at first, not sure if the idea was to choose a commandment I find hardest to obey, or a scientific law I find annoying, or something else entirely. But as I’ve been mulling it over in the days since, I wonder if that’s actually the point of the question: We all have God-given limitations, and what incites rebellion in one of us might be very different from what incites rebellion in another. It’s not a right-answer question, it’s a personal question. A thinking question.

My thinking has pointed me in the direction of my daughter.

Clara is a God-given limitation on my life. Her presence has drawn lines and placed boundaries in places that were once wide-open—boundaries on the clock that delineate naptime and bedtime, boundaries that alter where I can go and when and for how long, boundaries on what I speak and eat and listen to and do, because she is always watching me. Because of her, there are new limits of time and energy on the projects I can take on, the ideas I can bring to fruition, the thoughts I can organize enough to write.

Adjusting to these new limitations has been hard in a way that can feel invisible and isolating. I am often frustrated or depressed to realize that I’m not, in fact, infinite—that I don’t have troves of energy to draw from at the end of a long day; that I need eight hours of sleep even though I “should” be spending that time doing something; that I can’t usually take on the available volunteer roles at my church, or the extra unfilled shifts at my work.

It bothers me when I hear parents say things like, “I wish I’d done ___ before I had kids” or “You’re so lucky you don’t have any kids and can do whatever you want!” I never want my child to feel like a ball and chain, or a reason I didn’t get to have the life I wanted. But the limitations are real, and hard—especially without much of a family or community support system nearby. I was always a creator and a thinker and a doer. Now I’m … a mom?

Yes. Now I’m a mom. And moms are some of the most creative, thoughtful doers in the world—they just tend to be unseen. You can’t hit “publish” on most of what we create, think, and do. Our children are our masterpiece, made by God but shaped and loved and prized by us, His assigned caretakers. We are doing the work of Adam and Eve in Paradise:

Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

Genesis 2:15

The glorious garden courtyard of the Lord’s presence is no longer found in a place called Eden, but within every home and family that has been won to the Kingdom of Heaven. He dwells in us, in our children. What higher work is there for me in this moment than to “cultivate and keep” my Clara for the glory of my God?

That’s the wonder of God-given limitations: although to my small mind they often look like a bad thing at first glance, in reality they are guard-rails on my path, preventing me from wandering off toward lesser prizes than the crown of righteousness. It’s not that the only way to please God is by becoming a parent; rather, if we want to serve Him fully, we’ll need to submit to His desire and design for our lives—including the parts that appear to “hold us back”—no matter what our family situation, or lack thereof.

God is the infinite One. He intentionally created me to be finite. And sometimes being held back by my God-given limitations, while it can be frustrating or discouraging or downright painful, is exactly what I need.

reflections on another journey through the Bible

It’s naptime on June 29, 2022—which means it’s the first afternoon in six months that I have not had a mental checklist running of everything I need to do for Bible180 today, and a mental timer going so I can prioritize each task within the amount of time I estimate Clara will sleep. Some days, something else came first and all this had to wait until bedtime, but even then, the mental checklist was always there.

I made a commitment this year not only to read through the Bible in 180 days—which is something I’ve done several times already and no longer daunts me as it once did—but also to create a brief overview of all 66 Biblical books, to post the reading schedule weekly, to post the day’s passages daily, and to share some of my thoughts and/or favorite resources every day, too. It was a ton of work (you can find it all over on the official Bible180 Instagram page), and I am really proud of myself for staying (mostly) on top of it, even through several sicknesses and travel and all the other random mishaps of life.

To mark the end of this first Bible180 Challenge of 2022 (yes, I’m going to be starting over again on July 1, and it’s not too late to join), I decided to spend this naptime reflecting on the things I’ve learned (or re-learned) over the last 6 months:

Reading through the Bible — especially reading through it quickly — is an enormously powerful way to appreciate God’s whole story.

This is one of those things I “re-learned” this year. I KNOW how amazing it is to read the whole Bible as a unified story, but every time I do it, that story comes alive for me in a new and unique way. This time, I kept seeing both the sweeping big-picture view in which God crowned His Son King over a Creation that had been chasing after the deceitful attractions of Babylon AND the incredibly personal approach God took to make it all happen—advancing the plan through one flawed human at at time, until the only Perfect Man came to set things right.

It was fascinating to notice how much of God’s plan centered around whole nations, not necessarily individuals; it made me rethink the emphasis we place on the idea of a “personal relationship with God,” as if each of our faith-walks exists as something separate and self-contained from the universal story. At the same time, to see how He chose and worked through individuals—Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, to name a few of the big ones—and furthermore, to see how He cared for those that history has left forgotten and nameless by inviting the “least” of every tribe and tongue and people and nation into His glorious kingdom, left me breathless that He could be both infinite and immanent at the same time.

Somehow, the Bible captures the truth of who God is at both a cosmic and a microcosmic level. He is the King of my heart and the King of the universe simultaneously. He demands the allegiance of nations as well as the allegiance of secret souls.

Without the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) are meaningless.

Once we got into the New Testament several weeks ago, it became clearer than ever to me that we do a HUGE disservice to the Bible when we do not prioritize the teachings of the Old Testament. As the apostles, and Jesus Himself, clearly understood, the Old Testament is the foundation the entire Christian faith stands on; without it, we have only the story of a prophet and the claim that he was raised from the dead. The Hebrew Scriptures are what give credence to every bit of Jesus’ history, teachings, and miracles; they are the corroboration of His identity as the Messiah and what that means for the Jewish people and the rest of the world.

And yet, very often, we spend a good 80% of our time (if not more) studying the books of the New Testament, without establishing the proper background knowledge offered by the Old Testament. No wonder so many people find the Bible incredibly confusing—they’re reading it backwards!

One of the verses that really struck me in this regard was Hebrews 1:3:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Purification from sins? What is that, without Genesis to tell us about sin, or Leviticus to tell us about purity? In fact, what meaning does the “radiance of God’s glory” shining through the Son really have, if we can’t call to mind the Bible’s stunning word-pictures of the original Garden Paradise, the descriptions of God’s glory filling Solomon’s temple, or the prophetic promises of a New Creation to come?

I’m not saying that people can’t be redeemed and transformed by the Gospel unless they understand these things first, but I am saying there are a lot of baby Christians who have been stunted in their growth for too long because they haven’t been eating enough meat.

The Christian life should be unmistakably marked by joy, peace, love, and worship.

One thing that really disturbs me after spending so much time in the Bible over the last 6 months is how attitudes of fear, despair, and avarice pervade the American Church. So many Christians seem to be lost in the wilderness, creating golden calves as God’s stand-in because they can’t see that He is enthroned on the mountain right in front of their faces. When they should be dancing in triumph because their God has won, when they should be showering His abundant love on everyone they encounter because they’ve been so richly blessed by it, they are instead wallowing in the loss of cultural favor and shutting out those who might have needs — or they’re still standing in the prison cell of sin because no one told them Christ’s salvation is for NOW as much as it is for eternity.

Perhaps these weak Christians (of which I have often been one) are the product of a weak Gospel—one that only has power over the life to come, leaving this life as something we just have to “get through.” That is not the Gospel of Scripture! Look what Yahweh said about the objective of the Messiah on earth, according to the prophet Isaiah:

“I am the Lord. I have called you
for a righteous purpose,
and I will hold you by your hand.
I will watch over you, and I will appoint you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light to the nations,
in order to open blind eyes,
to bring out prisoners from the dungeon,
and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.”

Isaiah 42:6-7

The four Gospels bring this vision to life through the activities of Jesus Christ during His ministry. The apostles’ letters preach that it can be the enduring reality of a Church that chooses to live according to the upside-down ideals of the kingdom of heaven. The Gospel is for NOW. The King has been crowned. Our God wins.

So why are we still looking for another savior—the next president, perhaps, or a better political party? Why are we still living as slaves to sin—excusing our lusts and addictions as something biological or innate, when the blood of Jesus Christ was shed to make us NEW? Why are we just enduring this life, as if the victory has not yet been won, when it has?

I wonder what might happen in this country, and indeed the world, if we really took up the charge of Paul and the vision of Jesus by living peaceably and submissively despite what’s happening in politics; by loving one another without reservation or fear of the cost; by truly worshiping our crowned, enthroned, living King—yes, the One who resembles a slaughtered lamb more than He does a Lion.

What about you?

If you’ve EVER read through the Bible, I would love to hear what you learned and how it impacted your walk with God. Leave me a comment below!

If you read with us during Bible180 (even if you didn’t finish), I would love to hear how this challenge specifically went for you. Fill out the anonymous survey here!

And if you want to read through the Bible with me over the next 6 months—let’s do it! You can sign up to get all the resources here, follow along on Instagram here, and find the master schedule here! Meanwhile, naptime is just about over, so I’m going to take a break for the next couple days and I’ll be back in Genesis 1 with you on Friday!