3/20/22
Romans 11:33-36
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” 36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
You’ve heard me say that sometimes it is tough being a human being. It is difficult to be a Christian. It is a challenge to give, serve, respect, appreciate others, and feel courage, hope, love, joy, and peace. But it doesn’t have to be.
We make it tough on ourselves by our choices and decisions, by our attitudes and behaviors, and by whom we trust and whose opinions we value. Life is not throwing us knuckleballs and trying to trick us. We are not being thinned out of existence like an unneeded weed or superfluous seedling.
Life, the energy and unfoldment of God, is an ally. We are asked by the Bible to trust God. Proverbs 3:5 teaches us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Again, from Proverbs 28:26 we are taught: “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Psalm 37:5 tells us to “commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.”
In other words, trust God. He knows what he is doing. The depth of God’s knowledge is unfathomable. The depth of His riches of love, strength, wisdom, and joy are beyond our comprehension. Although we have gone to the depths of the ocean, 10,928 meters, there is no way to plumb the depths of God. Although we have sent the Voyager 1 8 billion kilometers into space, we cannot possibly determine how high God is.
As our opening verse alludes, God is infinitely deep and boundlessly high. And it is our human arrogance that even attempts to compare the spiritual nature of God to our physical universe. There is no way to do that – words cannot, and our limited minds cannot. Isaiah 55:8-9 explains it this way: “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
The Bible verse tells us God’s judgments are unsearchable. Meaning His decisions and decrees are based upon a Truth we cannot comprehend. Isaiah 40:28 echoes this: Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
We must trust that God knows the big picture, the next step, the final goal to every situation. To every situation. Just that phrase is impossible for us to fathom. We know neither the back story nor the potential for any of God’s children, and any judgment we make is erred. We don’t know what’s going on when someone is going through challenges – but God does.
In John 9:3 we are told: When Jesus and his disciples passed a man who was born blind, the disciples assumed he was afflicted because of some wrongdoing. Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” The man’s blindness was not intended to be a punishment, but a means to develop overcoming and an avenue to display the glory of God.
We don’t know why someone receives a wonderful blessing – but God does. There is no reason to be envious or jealous. There is no space for pride in our hearts when we experience the grace of God. God’s gracious judgments are unsearchable, incapable of being understood from our human perspectives.
It is only when we attune our hearts and minds to Spirit and feel the flow of Christ in our lives that we can release our human tendencies to judge and compare, and instead, move to that place of oneness with our Creator. In that place of unity and trust we see beyond the physical world and understand that whatever we have right now is what we are supposed to have. Who we are at this moment is who we are meant to be. Where we are on our spiritual journey is exactly where we are intended to be at this moment.
And that is true for everyone else. Romans 10:12-13 teaches: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” There is no reason to live life through fear, guilt, or worry. God loves us as much as He is ever going to love us right now, and God loves all His children in the same manner.
This concept, that God knows what He is doing, is not just Biblical – it is a fundamental spiritual principle. In the Tao Te Ching, written by the wiseman Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, Verse 29 shares this:
Do you think you could take over the world and improve it? I do not believe it can be done. Everything under heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be controlled. To tamper with it is to spoil it. To grasp it is to lose it. Allow your life to unfold naturally. Know that it too is a vessel of perfection. Just as you breathe in and breathe out, there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind; a time for strain and a time for ease; a time to be up and a time to be down; a time to grow in strength and a time to decay. The Sage accepts things as they are, seeing all of life as a movement toward perfection. She avoids extravagance, excess and extremes.
Every moment is perfect in and of itself. God’s Universe is ever expanding, evolving, growing, and at the same time God never changes. God’s ways, His activities, are inscrutable; they cannot be traced or tracked. No footprints, or fingerprints, or DNA are left behind. Psalm 77:19 tells us: Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. God is present, real, alive, and active, yet science is unable to find proof of existence because science looks in the wrong place. Ironically, there is no ‘place’ to look for God and so no proof can be forthcoming.
Verse 36 of our opening Bible verse pretty much summarizes the nature of God: From him and through him and for him are all things. God is the beginning and the end, and all things find their origin, being, and purpose in God. Marcus Aurelius wrote: “From Thee are all things; in Thee are all things, to Thee are all things.”
God, the Father, is the totality of all things. God is the creative life force from which the Universe springs and continues to expand and is the essence of everything that exists within it. God is the intelligence behind life and the substance of life itself, the Cause and the Effect. It is not our responsibility to make Life work. It is not our place to decide how things should be and then spend our life trying to attain our vision for what is right and proper for the entire world. We can release the compulsion to manipulate and control reality, and simply live as a Child of God - love, help, serve, do no harm.
When we live through our highest Self, in Christ, we allow God to do His works and we give glory, meaning we acknowledge the goodness, majesty, and perfect loving radiance of God, and express our gratitude for all things in our lives. To give God the glory is to recognize that all things come from God, that all things have their being through Him, and that all things end in Him.
It is my prayer that we trust God, trust His ways; trust that the Divine One has a plan for us individually and as a species, and this plan is intended to prosper us, bringing us the riches of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and abundance in all areas of our lives. God’s plan is perfect and meant to lift us, heal us, transform us, protect us, and give us hope and the confidence of a wonderful future. So yes, let’s trust God. He knows what He is doing.