The Unfathomable God

Spencer Wozniak

Religion | Personal Reflection | December 17, 2024

There are questions so vast that even our deepest thoughts collapse beneath their weight. What was before existence? What lies beyond all comprehension? It is in contemplating these mysteries that we begin to glimpse the grandeur of God—not in the clarity of answers, but in the silence of awe.

I contemplated:

For what existed,
    before existence?
And what was before,
    before before?

For where was space?
    and when was time?
Yet there you were,
    My Love divine.

To know God is not to master knowledge of Him, but to be mastered by Him. The Scriptures remind us that even our highest intellect bows before His glory:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
        declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

— Isaiah 55:8-9

We chase understanding. We want to know everything, and sometimes, we think we can. But yet—He always remains beyond all comprehension.

And still, He does not scorn our seeking. He invites it—not as a path to possess Him, but as a path to lose ourselves and so be found. For in His light, even our own hearts are obscured:

Before him all the nations are as nothing;
    they are regarded by him as worthless
    and less than nothing.

— Isaiah 40:17

When we cease striving to solve God like a riddle, He becomes to us a refuge. When we lose ourselves, we are finally free to be held:

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
     I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord Almighty is with us;
     the God of Jacob is our fortress.

— Psalm 46:10-11

The more we stare into the mystery, the more we love—not for what we grasp, but for Who has grasped us.

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.

— Psalm 145:3

Indeed, to fathom Him is not the goal. To worship Him is. And to worship Him is to say with every breath: I do not understand You, Lord—because You are greater than understanding.

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
    How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
    that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
    To him be the glory forever! Amen.

— Romans 11:33-36