Unending
The Mystery of God
I recently read A Voyage to Arcturus. It’s said to be one of the books that influenced C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy. The short version is that a man named Maskull travels to a distant planet in search of ultimate truth, and meets person after person who treats one facet of life as its whole truth.
One group believes pleasure is a trap, so they build their whole lives around denying it. Another group points out that hatred of pleasure has become the first group’s favorite pleasure, which has created pride. Their solution is to forget pleasure or pain altogether and simply focus on one’s duty. This belief is also eventually broken.
The pattern repeats until the very end, where the author reveals the deepest truth, which is that the world they all experience is but a distorted illusion ruled by a false god, and the real world lies somewhere beyond it. Despite being a fascinating theory, this belief is also incomplete. It treats the world God actually created as a counterfeit, as if creation is simply meant to be escaped and not redeemed.
It’s easy to do the same thing with God. We take one part of Him, and treat it as the whole. We find a version of Him that makes sense, and then settle there. It feels like we’ve cracked the code, and it feels safe, because we think we know how He works and what He will do. Then we stop seeking, and the relationship stagnates.
Say what you will about Moses, but he was almost always seeking the Lord. Scripture says God spoke with him face to face, the way a man speaks to his friend (Exodus 33:11). Few people in the Bible knew God that closely. And Moses continued to ask for more: “Please show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).
Get Sabbathmeditation’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
God tells him that no one can see His face and live. So He places Moses in a gap in the rock, covers him with His hand, and passes by. Moses sees only His back.
In the fourth century, a bishop named Gregory of Nyssa wrote a book on the life of Moses. He noticed that the closer Moses came to God, the more he saw how far beyond him God was. At the burning bush, God showed up in light. Later, on the mountain, Moses walked into the thick darkness where God was (Exodus 20:21). Gregory read that darkness as Moses going deeper into God.
He also had an interesting take on seeing God’s back. To see someone’s back, you have to be following them. Moses saw God by walking behind Him, and that is how we see Him too.
Gregory wrote that the true vision of God is “never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.” Everything God shows us is meant to make us want more of Him. God is limitless, so that desire never has to run out. Paul describes the same pull when he talks about straining forward to what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13).
God wants to be known, and He shows Himself to those who seek Him. But He is an infinite being, so we must not fall into the trap of believing there is nothing left to pursue. The mystery is part of what makes Him worth following, and that relationship will deepen forever.
So don’t settle for your present understanding of God. He will break your expectations, but each time He does, you get to see a little more of who He is.
Meditation: Mystery
May you keep pursuing Him.
