Many are the things I cannot understand, all around me mysteries I see.
This is a wonderful song written when the author was inspired by the night sky in rural Australia and was amazed by the wonder of God’s creation. Living in Killyleagh, we too can experience the wonder of God’s creation, different though it is from Australia.
As hard as we might try, we will never fully grasp the variety and wonder of our planet, the universe and the galaxies. It’s the same with our God, He is larger and more complex than we could ever imagine. The bible tells us:
“Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways.” Romans 11:33
He is love. 1John 16:14: God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. You can see God’s love for us throughout the bible by His actions, the greatest one being sending His Son to earth to open a direct line of communication with Him when we humans had messed everything up, and we can still communicate with Him today.
He is faithful. My favourite verse about God’s faithfulness is 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. So, He is forgiving as well as faithful. The faithfulness of God means He never changes, is true to His word, has made us promises, and He keeps his promises forever.
He is knowing. That God knows the number of hairs on my head, even as they decrease, leaves me in awe. How could He possibly do this? It is beyond my understanding but because Jesus said it, and it is recorded in Matthew’s gospel, my faith lets me believe it is true.Hebrews 11 sums up how I feel about my faith “now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”At Sunday School we sang the chorus ‘our God is a great big God’. He is bigger than we can imagine, and I have a wild imagination! While we learn a lot about God through the bible, prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit we can’t possibly understand God fully. I’m ok with that because of His grace. Grace cannot be earned; it is an undeserved favour, freely given. God’s grace is the bridge He built for us to have a relationship with Him. When inexplicable things happen that we can’t understand, we can trust that God has a purpose for them, He has our best interests in mind. We don’t know everything about God, but from what we do know we can be certain that God is Good.Another line from Howard Davis, the composer of the song, sums it all up nicely…
Is the boundless love of God that pardoned me; O the wonder of His grace!