Then Job replied to the LORD:
“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Job 42:1-3 NIV
As Christians, our quest in life is to seek God. We encounter God through worship, through prayer, through Bible study, through the sacraments, through the Word proclaimed in sermons, through reading renown theologians share their understanding of God, and through works of service. You would think that as one who went to seminary, I would have an adequate grasp of God and what faith in God means. But in actuality, I feel like Job.
Why do I feel like Job? Because in the book of Job we read that he and his friends began speculating, explaining, and discussing God to Job in their little small group sessions. And in the midst of all this lecturing, Job actually encountered God. And it silenced him. This encounter with the Almighty so overwhelmed Job that it silenced all his questions and he just sat back and was hushed. As one person explained to me, Job was awed into humility.
What I am trying to say is that the more I know about God the more inadequate I feel. The more I encounter God, the more I realize how little I know about what the Holy Spirit can do in my life, of the atoning work of the grace of Jesus Christ offers to us salvation. Once I think that I got a handle on who God is, on what his powerful presence in our lives means to us, once I feel like I got my arms around him, he gets bigger. Once I have him fixed in a place where I can comprehend him, I look around the corner and there is more of God.
Occasionally, we all need to throw out all the categories we put God in, that narrowly attempt to define him, to be silenced and just stand in awe of who God is and accept that we will never find categories to fully describe him. We may never be able to fully comprehend all things. And this is something that should not frustrate us in our Christians walk and something in which we feel defeated because of our lack of knowing. But it is something we can simply accept and indeed marvel about who he is and how wonderful and satisfying his grace is.
We should always be searching for who God is. For this is not a bad thing, for once we think we have found out the whole essence of God, we stop looking. Once you find Waldo in the “Where’s Waldo” picture book, you put the book down. But isn’t it just like God to be a God that we cannot completely find, rather it is a God for whom we must constantly be searching. For if we are searching, we are growing. Once we stop searching, we are dead. Matt. 6:33 says “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you.” And as we continue to seek his kingdom, we are not to be dismayed that we haven’t fully found it yet, but to be encouraged to know in all that we do, his grace is sufficient.