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Great And Unsearchable


This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (Jeremiah 33:2-3)
          What sort of great and unsearchable things don’t you know that you’d like God to tell you. I can think of lots of fine sounding answers: the cure for each form of cancer, the cure for COVID-19, the cures for all contagious diseases, the answer to the violence and hatred in our society, the fix for climate change, the solution to poverty…abuse… addiction…depression….
          Then there the more personal things, who we’re going to spend our lives with, what to do about ______, how we can matter, what’s going to happen today, tomorrow (or in the next 8 months), that we’re good enough (or how to become so,)  how to not end the day as a failure, etc. We are woefully under-educated. Life would be so much better for us if we only had a better life-GPS. Yes, it would be nice if God told us these things.
          But that doesn’t seem to be the way God operates most of the time. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that God does operate that way a lot, but we don’t like the answers. Death solves a lot of problems. For most of us, that’s not an answer we want to hear even though it’s a great answer. Loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths, and loving our neighbors as ourselves may solve all our problems but that’s not the answer we want, either.
          We want something new. Something dramatic. Something that will give us control, or power, or money. We may even say to ourselves, “I know all that other stuff. That doesn’t help right now.” The truth is that there is more than one way to know, and what we know from before is not the same as knowing it right now. Consider the old story of the husband who told his wife “I said I love you when we got married. If that changes, I’ll let you know.” Is that really sufficient, or do we all (male and female) need to know that God cares right here, right now, in this instant that might be like other instances we’ve faced, but it’s right here and right now.
          This doesn’t mean God can’t and doesn’t tell us those things, but I think the great and unsearchable things that we most need to be told are:
I am still God.
I am still here.
I still love you.
'          If only we heard those things, and recognized them for what they are, we would realize that they are great and unsearchable. And I need to read this passage every thirty second or so.


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