Aug
27
2012
Too Wonderful for Us
A treasured moment from the film Annie Hall. Little Alvie’s mother has dragged him to a psychologist:
“What is that your business?” I love that.
There are some things too deep, too dense, too wrapped up in the heavenly economy for us to fathom. God operates in dimensions more than our understanding.
I am always struck by the Lord’s response(s) to the suffering Job. He condescends to answer the laments, but not with sentimental salves and theological niceties — the sort of things we most readily offer others in affliction — but with a dizzying bombardment of the epic scope of his omniscience and omnipotence. Job, scraping the boils off his ash-caked skin with broken pottery, is suddenly taken out into the boundless sea of God’s might. He is carried about like a cork on the waves of God’s sovereignty. “I have uttered what I did not understand,” Job finally says, “things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3).
God is in his heavens. All is according to plan. “What is that your business?” It’s not. Not most of it, anyway. It’s God’s business. It is too high for us, and not our place to presume upon. Maybe the universe is expanding and will break. It’s our job to be awed. And, of course, to do our homework.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
– Psalm 139:5-6