Deep Calls Out To Deep

You know, I've said these words and I've sung them and I've even tried to explain them to others. However, I've never processed on them and tried to make them personal.

Earlier this afternoon I was reading Beth Moore's blog and she said something that triggered a lot of thoughts in my mind.

Her words: "The need for adventure was sewn within our souls by divine hands so that deep would call out to deep and we’d drive our insatiable selves straight to the One and Only God who can sustain it."

You see, I began to consider the depths of that sentence. The verse comes from Psalm 42 (verse 7). The Psalmist's soul is crying out for God. It's a very familiar Psalm and begins with: "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?"

The depth of God is calling out to the very deepest parts of us. As we respond to that call, we are drawn along a path that leads us to our greatest adventure. Nothing about God is shallow or uninteresting.

Romans 11:33 say, "Oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out."

Now, what do you do with this promise? "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God." (I Corinthians 2:9-10)

This gets more and more exciting to me. I love a good mystery. I love learning things. I love the fact that no matter how much I learn, there is always something out there that I don't know. It excites me that no matter how much information is on the internet, in dictionaries and encyclopedias, in scientific journals and in the minds of the most brilliant scientists, thinkers and scholars, there will always be something yet unknown.

In February of this year, scientists discovered a vast ocean inside the mantle of the earth beneath Asia (article here). In May of 2006, the BBC reported that a 3 week voyage on the Atlantic discovered thousands of new species when they plumbed depths that had never before been achieved (article here). NASA has discovered a liquid ocean on one of Jupiter's moons - Ganymede (article here). No matter where we look, no matter what we do - there is always something that can be discovered and explored.

One of my favorite verses in scripture is found in Jeremiah - 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

I'm the person that wants to explore those unsearchable things. The thing is, I will never even be able to comprehend what they might be! I am constantly fascinated by physicists who are plumbing the depths of all sorts of phenomena. They are searching for those mysteries. I love mathematicians that see patterns in the numbers that we interact with every day. Cosmologists that are trying to understand the grandeur of our universe entrance me. The mysteries that God has placed in our midst are there to remind us of the glory of His creation and the incredible depths of who He is.

Now, while we're at it, I want to look at Ecclesiastes 3:11. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

The writer of Ecclesiastes says in 8:17 "When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man's labor on earth - his eyes not seeing sleep day or night - then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it."

God put eternity in our hearts. That's unfathomable! Eternity = Infinity. In our hearts! No wonder we are constantly searching for the answer to a mystery. And though God has put this in our hearts, we still cannot fathom it. We can't discover its meaning ... we simply can not.

While Beth Moore relates our desires for the unsavory things in life to this constant searching for the depths of mysteries, I am much more prone to see the desire for knowledge and exploration as an outgrowth of this searching. The serpent tempted Eve by offering her the power of knowledge which would be the same as that which God had. From the beginning of time, mankind was trying to comprehend the knowledge of eternity that was set inside them.

Job 5:9, "He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted."

Job 11:7-8, "Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens - what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave - what can you know. Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea."

I think we all know about this connection between our soul and the depths of God. God has given us a curiousity about it. We are impelled to constantly search for God in this world.

Blaise Pascal (mathematician and philosopher) said, "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself." (from Pensees)

We have heard this spoken of as the God-Shaped hole that is inside us.

Augustine said in his Confessions, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are rest-less till they find their rest in you."

I've been working on this thought for quite awhile this afternoon and I've written way too much about it. It looks like this might have the makings for one of my Saturday evening sermons. But, I'm not sure I've done what I set out to do. However, I'm already at the point where this is probably much too long and therefore unreadable.

I'm having a difficult time describing with words that which is indescribable ... the depth of God and the yearning that my soul has for Him. My mind is trying to comprehend the vast gulf that is between God and me, yet can be crossed simply because He continues to call out to the deep places of my soul. There are mysteries in the vast gulf and as I explore the journey towards God, I will encounter these great mysteries.

Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings."

Over and over, we are told that God has set things in place so that we will have discoveries ahead of us. The journey is ours to take. There will always be a yearning to get to the end of the journey, to see that light at the end of the road, to go through the open door which John speaks of in Revelation, to see God on the throne.

And then, I Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see but a poor reflection; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

The depths are too great to comprehend, but those depths are calling out to the depths of my soul.