Infinitely Discoverable
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. (Proverbs 25:2)
To Start:
Genesis 2:10-12, “A river flowed out of Eden… divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.”
God made the world, all the worlds, and everything in them. And some of the coolest stuff He put out of sight: in caves, in mountains, beyond our stars, within our cells. Only to be discovered by digging, hammering, sifting, searching, exploring.
“It is the glory of God to conceal things.”
And, Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…”
God made kings to be kings, sure, but He also made every one of us—male and female—to be royal. And “it is the glory of kings to search things out.”
And So:
The best stuff in life is often the most difficult stuff to find, acquire, and use. We often look at those things—be they physical, geological things, or spiritual truths, or personal realizations—with resentment. Why not just make it easy?
Do we really want it all to be easy? There’s a lot of stuff that’s easy. The ocean is easy to sit beside (most of the time:) But then, that gets old. The Louvre is filled with things that were not easy to make and aren’t always easy to enjoy, but they are glorious. But then the Louvre gets old.
First of all, this proverb reveals something about God. We do not want a God who is easy. We do not want a God who is easily knowable, easy to interact with. We want a holy God whose wisdom is infinite, whose wisdom keeps popping up in the most unusual places. Go to the ends of the earth? Dig a giant hole? Guess what you’ll find… something marvelous and amazing. Fly in a rocket far off into outer space? Take pictures of light years away? Guess what you’ll find… something marvelous and amazing. Pull out a microscope and scalpel and lasers and dig and slice into cells? What will you find? Something marvelous and amazing.
What has it been doing out there, down there, in there, all these years?! Waiting for us to find it and say, Glory! God’s wisdom is so thick, so thorough, so vast, so precise that it is infinitely discoverable.
Infinitely discoverable. Enjoy!
Second of all, this proverb reveals something about us. We don't always love easy. We love to search things out. So, go, dig, fly, explore, examine, marvel and be amazed. Discover. What God is glorified in through discovering, we too are glorified by in discovering. It is royal work, to dig—in Scripture, in caves, in psyches, in systems—and discover the artistry and fear of the Lord. And we love it.
So What:
What if we stopped bellyaching about stuff being hard? Some things can be easy, and that’s good. But what is lost if we have too much easy? Perhaps our glory slips away, our dignity erodes. (Too much hard and we become insane, cold, obsessed, driven into a waking madness by an idolatrous need.)
But we weren’t made for easy.
We were made to “search things out.” "The glory of kings and queens is to search things out."
In other words, my friends, to paraphrase Genesis 3, “There’s GOLD in them-there hills!”
Find a passage in Scripture that bothers you? Dig. Encounter something in yourself that frustrates you? Dig. Catch a passion for a project, a program, an instrument, a pile of rubble, a bit of melody, a bit of insight? Go.
Are there undiscovered melodies to lift countless spirits? Unpainted masterpieces to fill countless souls with awe? Unbuilt cathedrals to draw forth praise from countless voices? Unfound cures to heal countless bodies? Unexplained systems to salve countless societal ills? Unwritten novels to give hope to millions? Tools to be tweaked? Rubble to be redeemed?
Are there unfound ways through the perpetual wilderness that is our future? Unrealized connections between problems that suddenly become each other’s solutions?
We were made for such things. And God has not just left us to it. He put it all out there in the first place. Like the “springs in Baca” (Psalm 84:6), God put them there, under the sand. With you in mind. And He’s rooting for you to find it, to worship, to praise Him, and to love your neighbors.
“So that the Name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2Thess 1:12)
What a God!
Giddyap!
Photo by Alejandro Alas on Unsplash
