Limitless

Directly in front of me I see a computer screen, then my boots propped on my desk, then an ugly wall. Beyond the wall I am using my experience and imagination, but I’m certain that there is a hallway, two other walls, a short piece of grassed land, woods, houses, Highway 278, Newton County, northeast Georgia… My mind catalogues everything I know into space and time markers. I have no memory that doesn’t include a picture of some sort and an affiliation with some particular time or season of my life. Our minds are beautiful in the way that they can capture, categorize, and recall events and impressions. Everything that I know to be true has been affirmed and re-affirmed through sensory input for over a billion ticking seconds of awareness. Frame by frame my mind files away details and data that create a hazy scratch-n-sniff photo-album full of images and smells and sounds and impressions.

The one thing in this universe that I cannot reduce to a set of observations is God. He is infinitly beyond my mind’s capacity. He is the exception to every rule. He is, at the same time, aware of time, and beyond it. I just can’t process that. How could God have an awareness of time, yet not experience time? Somehow God does.He just is! I think herein lies the great conflict of humanity and the beginnings of a thing called faith. The conflict is, of course, that we insist upon knowing that which we cannot possibly know. The moment that God becomes un-mysterious to you, He has ceased to be an all-powerful infinite God, but rather some creation of your own pride and ignorance. There are things that we know to be true about God…revealed things…experienced things…even seen things, but the image is infinitely incomplete. Faith in the God of the Bible requires us to relinquish our experiential confidence. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)”

If I am going to surrender my life to God, then I must be in constant pursuit of greater understanding of Him. If I’m going to live a life of faith, however, I must be humbly at peace with my limitations. God has made himself known, but he will not be discovered. He cannot be revealed or explained. He is no “Wizard of Oz”. There is certainly a part of me that wants to have everything figured out, but I sure am glad that God is much much bigger than my comprehension. His nature is paradoxical and unnatural. His size and power are unthinkable. His plans are often illogical. His Knowledge is unfathomable. He is limitless! The more I understand of him the more I love him. That thought helps me to grasp heaven a little better. One endless day I will know him in way that will overwhelm everything but love. Then…I will spend eternity exploring his perfection.

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