unsearchable
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
—Isaiah 40:28
I’m sure many of you, like me, have a search engine dashboard set as your Internet home page. Whether it’s iGoogle, Bing or another service, the instant you fire up your Web browser the wealth (and poverty) of the World Wide Web is yours, just waiting for you to type a few letters into that omnipresent search bar.
In a largely searchable world, the words of the prophet Isaiah come as a bit of a shock. “His understanding is unsearchable.” God is not subject to Google algorithms. He cannot be quantified in any terms, human or otherwise. He is his own system software, perfect, immutable and ultimately incomprehensible to our homo sapien intellects.
And somehow, I find that profoundly comforting.
In a world full of answers—answers we want, answers we don’t want, and Wikipedia answers you’d better never cite if you take a class from me ☺--it becomes easy to believe that when we don’t feel like we have all the answers it is because we are missing something. This is an information age; we should be able to solve our problems with a touch of the screen or some proper technical analysis. If we can’t, there must be something wrong with us.
The reality, however, is that life is far more complex and mysterious than the gurus of Silicon Valley will ever be able to decipher. We see dimly; someday we will see in full, Technicolor glory.
The wonderful part is that while this unsearchable understanding may not be accessible to us directly, we have a way to gain access that far outstrips the qualities even of my beloved MacBook Pro. The God who knows us and everything in us—and manages to love us anyway!—desires relationship with us. Two-way communication. Dialogue that will unlock the secrets he has in store for us, in God’s time and according to God’s purposes.
We cannot search, but in the end, we will know. And meanwhile, we can benefit from the guidance of the One who will never deliver an inaccurate result.
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
—Isaiah 40:28
I’m sure many of you, like me, have a search engine dashboard set as your Internet home page. Whether it’s iGoogle, Bing or another service, the instant you fire up your Web browser the wealth (and poverty) of the World Wide Web is yours, just waiting for you to type a few letters into that omnipresent search bar.
In a largely searchable world, the words of the prophet Isaiah come as a bit of a shock. “His understanding is unsearchable.” God is not subject to Google algorithms. He cannot be quantified in any terms, human or otherwise. He is his own system software, perfect, immutable and ultimately incomprehensible to our homo sapien intellects.
And somehow, I find that profoundly comforting.
In a world full of answers—answers we want, answers we don’t want, and Wikipedia answers you’d better never cite if you take a class from me ☺--it becomes easy to believe that when we don’t feel like we have all the answers it is because we are missing something. This is an information age; we should be able to solve our problems with a touch of the screen or some proper technical analysis. If we can’t, there must be something wrong with us.
The reality, however, is that life is far more complex and mysterious than the gurus of Silicon Valley will ever be able to decipher. We see dimly; someday we will see in full, Technicolor glory.
The wonderful part is that while this unsearchable understanding may not be accessible to us directly, we have a way to gain access that far outstrips the qualities even of my beloved MacBook Pro. The God who knows us and everything in us—and manages to love us anyway!—desires relationship with us. Two-way communication. Dialogue that will unlock the secrets he has in store for us, in God’s time and according to God’s purposes.
We cannot search, but in the end, we will know. And meanwhile, we can benefit from the guidance of the One who will never deliver an inaccurate result.
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