“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” ~Genesis 1:2
“‘Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?'” ~Job 38:16
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” ~Psalm 42:7
I’m a constant state of being shaken. It’s like everything that I thought once was reality, time and time again shows itself to be fake. And now I’m to the point where I have to offer to myself some sort of case on the matter. Because while I might arm wrestle in this, the truth is that something is reality and something is fake. Before I had a craving to chase after God I sort of had a paradigm that Christianity meant agreeing to the proper formula of words composed in phrases, making paragraphs that, with the right footnotes, made proper belief in God. Prayer was an awkward scraping of the inside of the heart to compose some kind of acceptable offering of vocabulary to an unseen God, that He might grace me with some kind of sign that I’m not crazy. I hoped for a burning bush, or a burning blade of grass – or heck, it’d even be cool if my shirt spontaneously caught on fire. I just wanted a touch, and when that touch came sometimes I would just bask in the euphoric feelings for a spell and then cut off those feelings if they got a little too crazy. My faith was a stringing together of almost-defining moments. So close to abandon but instead of jumping off of the cliff of faith I would pace back and forth a bit to the point where people would look and say “Wow. Look at that faith.” And then I would pull myself back onto the ledge. Brush off my hands and then say, “Phew, that was intense.” But the beckoning within Christian faith goes so much deeper. It feels like the temptation within the western culture is to pay dues to have your name on a roll-call on a church somewhere. And on the other end of that another temptation is to Lone Ranger your faith standing independent from any source of structure. While I know the Body of Christ is not to be a mindless organism paying homage to manmade rules, I know quite definitely that a body without muscle or tendons will not stand (quite literally). On either side, I think that if we cling onto these different mentalities it’s deadly. I think one of the most dangerous tragedies of a humanistic culture is that they try to neuter the Creator of any mystery – when a mystery is what he is. There is so much we as humans cannot comprehend and fathom. Universes, solar systems, galaxies, not to mention the full spectrum of our own existence. But I know some Christians (even ministers) who will say that God is not a mystery. When it comes down to it, those who subscribe to that frame of mind don’t even know themselves let alone the fullness of the Almighty God.
I’ve been struck with a mysterious thought as of late. In the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1:2 speaks of the beginning of time and creation. It says that everything was formless and empty and darkness was over the face of the deep. The Hebrew word there for deep is “Teh-home’, teh-home”, literally meaning abyss. Now, the point that I’m making here is that we have no comprehension of what this “abyss” consisted of. All we know is that it was “the deep.” There’s no other definition for it. There’s no explaining it away theologically or scientifically. We don’t know what lies in the deep, how deep the deep is, or what the deep is. In Job 38 is one of the most phenomenally powerful exchanges in history, Job has a conversation with God. Through the entirety of the book we see the trials and journey that Job walks through with the darkened counsel of his friends. And then when God speaks, He speaks out of the mystery of who He is. This “deep” word shows up again when God asks Job, “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” He saying to Job (or to you and I for that matter), “Have you walked the recesses of the Teh-home’, teh-home’? Do you have any idea what lies beyond the comprehension of your limited human mind?” We see it again in Psalm 42 as scribed by the psalmist: “Teh-home’, teh-home’ kaw-raw’ ale, el teh-home, teh-home'” Deep calls (by name) unto the deep. The abyss to the abyss. The deep waters unto the deep waters. Despair unto the despair. The unknowing unto the unknowing. The creator God, Elohim, is a mystery; the I AM who not only knows what the abyss is and is made of, but He is greater than mysterious deep.
In the New Testament this mystery pops up again and again. One of those places being Ephesians 3:16-19. The Apostle Paul is praying, saying:
“I pray that out of his [God’s] glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
The word for deep here is bath’-os (in the Greek). It means profundity literally and figuratively it means mystery. That in this prayer is the fullness of the stretch of comprehension. As long as long is, as wide as wide can go, as high as high flies and as deep as deep “the mystery” goes, the deep none of us understands, the deep that is dark, the deep that is murky, the dark deep that homes things that lurk, crawl and (maybe) calls to each other by name, or maybe calls to us by name if we’d have ears to hear it. This incomprehensible spectrum is mystery that characterizes yet another mystery: the Love of Christ. This mystery is: somehow the uncreated God dwells in the hearts of His creation, and somehow He can fill those creatures with the fullness of Him who created the very air that creatures breathe and who formed the universe which contains the planet that homes the existence of these creatures – these creatures of dirt and supernatural breath. It is these creatures that bear likeness to Him but are fallen, but will one day see clearly. Maybe not see Him in perfection, or even themselves in perfection…but at least they’ll see clearly the perspective of His attributes and how they are perfect in relation to us as His creation.
I suppose in the end, my point is that the greatest mystery is the mystery that lies beyond the deep, the unfathomable. The mystery of the One who knows the recesses of the deep who has searched it and knows it just as He has search our hearts and knows our hearts. In the Teh-home’, teh-home’ of our own hearts; in the downcast, and despairing; in the frightening places of our own make up, He is the Rock. He is the song in the night that is sung by the nocturnal cries of His Beloved as she longs to see Him. As she misses Him. As her very soul thirsts for Him. As she longs through tears day and night to see Him and to meet with Him. We have our own deep(s), just like the Psalmist, that we face and through them we long for one thing: God. The triune Creator: whose very heart beats with desire for His creation.
“Come, Lord Jesus, Come.”