Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 254 · September 11
Past Finding Out
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
A weighted line dropped over the side of a boat, running out through your hands, and no bottom. Depth is Paul's own word, and that is the sensation he is after.
Notice where Paul stands when he says it. He is at the end of eleven chapters of hard argument in which he raised the ugliest objections himself and answered them one at a time. Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. The doxology is what he had left after the work, and it is not available as a way round it.
What he says next is borrowed. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? is Isaiah's question, put to exiles who had decided God was not tracking their case. Who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? stands beside what God says to Job out of the storm: whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. Job had shouted his questions for chapters on end before that came, and the answer was more questions. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? What Job says at the end is where Paul lands: I have uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. That is the promise, and the only one this passage makes. Nothing you cannot get to the bottom of is outside of him. The unsearchable part belongs to the same person as the part that was explained.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 254 is Never Far Away (Acts 17:27).