Mystery

Even though I wonder every year exactly when spring will come, I never wonder if it will come. So perhaps the most mysterious thing about the seasons is not their variability but their constancy.

Turning of Days p. 40

Why should we expect things to stay the same? Why for millennia have plants produced seed after their kind (Genesis 1:12), and why has the sun risen and set (Ecclesiastes 1:5)? We take it all for granted because it has been the same, with only minor variations and hiccups (note the Mt. Loki eruption in 1783 and the Mt. Tambora eruption in 1815). And all of this, of course, leads us to the question of why we are here. Science says: time and chance. But as the complexity of this creation continues to unfold, time has to stretch just a little further as does our credulity of it all. Ultimately, faith becomes necessary to believe in time and chance. And faith is necessary to believe in a Creator. But the consistency of the story of Scripture and my observations of the world seem more sure than the inconsistencies of time and chance and my observations of the world. 

But that is a far cry from certainty. God is mystery. More mysterious than we are to a gerbil, I’m sure. And thus much of his creation is mystery too. Why would we expect otherwise. We are finite; he is infinite. We are only sub-creators to the great creator who not only made it all but made it all to work. We create tools that break, systems that are unjust, clothes that wear out, and thoughts that we forget. We should stand in awe of the Creator who ordered it that way, who arranged and planned out and set in motion and tends and cares. Who is creative enough to think of it in the first place and powerful enough to accomplish it and loving enough to populate it and redeem it. We should stand in awe that in a few short months, buds will break forth into something beautiful and mysterious in their own right.