The big assignment in my ninth grade English class was to read three books by the same author and to write an essay discussing the similarities and differences across the works. This was overwhelming for my 14 year old self. I loved to read, but to read 3 whole books in the time frame AND write a whole multiple page essay seemed like an awful lot. However, when Ms. Zeady, my teacher, told me I could choose an author in a genre I already loved, I was relieved and even a little excited about it.

I loved murder mysteries, specifically written by Mary Higgins Clark. I would try to figure out the “who-dun-it” and to solve it before the book’s heroine did. I liked the “not knowing,” then assimilating all the clues, to think through the conflict, and eventually being rewarded by either solving the mystery OR being surprised by the outcome. The suspense, the imagined danger, the “what ifs” kept me engaged and turning page after page. I couldn’t wait to dive into the three books and do all the reading.

But, I believe, Ms. Zeady knew what would happen as I read “those” books. You see, they weren’t classics, or sophisticated reads. There weren’t great literary works. I mean, on some level I knew that too, but what I discovered as I read the books and wrote the paper my love for this author and her plethora of mystery novels waned. I found Mary Higgins Clark’s formula. These books didn’t have a great deeper theme or meaning. I realized that ALL her books had the same basic outline. I learned that each book had the same plot. I’ve haven’t read another one of her books since. The familiarity I had gained of the author and her works ruined my desire to come back for more. The suspense was solved, the intrigue gone, the mystery over.

My God is not like this. My God is unsearchable. My God is mysterious.

WHAT I DON’T MEAN:

• God can’t be found – Actually, quite the opposite is true. He has revealed Himself to man both generally (throughout creation) and specifically (through His Word and His Son). His word promises that if we seek Him we will find Him.
• God can’t be known – He truly wants us to intimately know Him. Not merely a rote knowledge of facts about Him or memorized words from the scriptures, but knowing who He truly is, what He likes, what He doesn’t like, how He works, what He is doing.
• God is spooky or tricky or somehow cosmically playing with His creation – Things that are we find as “unsearchable” or “mysterious” usually carry a connotation of being scary, forbidden or even “bad.” We assume the meaning or outcome is negative, like when ignorance doesn’t mean stupidity or inferiority. It simply means we just don’t know.

WHAT I DO MEAN:

• God is bigger than what we can comprehend – I don’t want a God that I can’t put into a box, manipulate to do what I want Him to do, or predict His plans. His word tells us that His ways, His judgments, His understandings are all “unsearchable.” This means that as we study Him, His words and His ways, we will never exhaust the complexities of who He is and how He does things.
• God’s ways of doing things are higher, are better than ours – Job found this out as he sought out God through his losses and trials. God remained with him, establishing, restoring and upholding him as He gently asked Job where and how Job contributed to the creating and the maintaining of all that he could behold. As I engage mentally and think about God’s word I often find myself confused about how God works and why He does what He does, then I remember that he calls me to faith, to believe with hope and I push into the mystery that He is greater, higher than my limited human capacity to comprehend.
• God deserves to be praised for His mystery – It is a great thing that man has yet to fully figure God out. Like how meteorologists have greatly improved predicting weather patterns and storms over the years, with greater technology and deeper understanding – but can do nothing to stop or alter the courses of those patterns and storms. Man can grow in knowledge and utilize our increased wisdom to fuel our praise of our Creator for being beyond our knowledge base.

As I am reading through the Bible chronologically this year, I am actively looking on each page for the fingerprints of God’s character. What does He reveal about who is? What does He show about His ways? As I have worked through the Old Testament this “unsearchable” word keeps popping up. Then in worship songs, hymns and even sermons, the idea of the “mysteries” of God echo. The Holy Spirit keeps pricking my senses to this attribute of who God is.

As I seek to live my life with Him, I am comforted by this characteristic of His personality. I will never tire or run out of new nuances , deeper depths or higher heights to discover. I won’t tire of His complexities. He is new every morning. His deeps are too deep. His heights too high. His complexities far too complex.

His plot line, His story is far greater and more intertwined than I could compose or comprehend. Yet, a part of that mystery is the way He loves me and includes me in it. How He saved me through His Son, how He upholds me, how He is and does and will do – this is all part of the wonderful, marvelous mystery of who He is.

I still love a mystery and will at times read one. However, this mystery of my God is beyond what Ms. Zeady and Mary Higgins Clark could ever have in mind. The more I walk with Him, the more of the mystery I want to know, to enjoy and to take comfort in – trusting my mysterious God to be all the other attributes I am finding Him to be. More on those characteristics on other days. Today, He is simply, and complexly, mysterious.