I have a confession to make. When I was in high school, math came easy to me. Whenever the teacher taught a new concept, I picked it up quickly.
When I went away to college, because I was studying to be a pastor, I was only required to take one math class. They allowed me to test out of it. In fact, I did so well on the test that they asked if I wanted to be a math tutor. Feeling pretty good about myself, I agreed.
The only problem was that they wanted me to tutor calculus. I had never studied calculus before, but because math came easy to me in high school, I assumed I would be able to figure it out.
As I tried to help two other students, I struggled to understand it myself. I honestly think I did help them pass the class, but, to my embarrassment, I never truly understood calculus.
I just couldn’t get my mind wrapped around it.
We struggle with that as human beings. We all have a deep yearning to understand, to grasp, to be able to wrap our minds around what is happening in our lives and our world. When we don’t understand – when we can’t get our minds wrapped around it – we struggle and stress. We get frustrated, sometimes even with God.
“God, why is this happening? Why are you doing this to me? I don’t understand.”
This Sunday at our church, we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday – a Sunday when we marvel at the fact that our God is three persons in one God.
God is singular and plural at the same time.
That math, however, doesn’t make much sense. One plus one plus one does not equal one – not even in calculus.
That’s not the only thing in the Bible that doesn’t make sense. Jesus gives us a wafer of bread and a swig of wine and says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” He speaks of eternity – being outside the existence of time. He says that his will is always done and that he wants all people to be saved. Yet not everybody is.
I have a hard time getting my mind wrapped around those things.
When we look at our lives or the world around us, many things don’t make much sense to us. God, why do you allow evil people to hurt innocent children? God, why does my mom have to waste away in the darkness of dementia? God, why is our world such a mess?
Being a Christian means learning to be comfortable standing in the mysteries of God. God never promises to explain everything to us, or that we would even be able to understand it if he did.
But being comfortable standing in the mysteries of God takes humility. It means understanding that there is a God, and you are not him. As the Prophet Isaiah said, God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8,9).
Being comfortable standing in the mysteries of God requires faith. It means trusting that God loves us and is working all things for our good, even when we can’t see or understand how. It means remembering that he is the God who worked all of time and history to bring Jesus into this world to save us.
So, humbly trust. He is God. He loves you. He knows what he is doing.
Being a Christian means learning to be comfortable standing in the mysteries of God.
Pastor Andrew Schroer has been a pastor for over 25 years and is currently serving at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Edna, Texas. You can find his latest books, “364 Days of Thanksgiving” and “364 Days of Devotion,” on Amazon.com.
