The Mysteries Still Masked

 

“God in his wisdom [measures] out the revelation of himself to match our ability and the progress of grace in our lives.”

The Cloud of Unknowing, translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher.

“Can we take the turnoff for the Wild Horse Mountain Lookout?”

It was the same question I’d been asking various drivers for the last five years. On my first-ever trip up from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast (en route to 2014 NET training), the van had passed the sign for Wild Horse Mountain and my heart had thrilled.

Were there really wild horses? Or was it just a good lookout? Could you drive to the top, or was there a hike involved? Could you see the ocean from the top? Or just a quality panorama of the Bruce Highway?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions, and the desire for their resolution plagued me every single time I sat in the passenger seat on that drive northwards.

More than even answering the questions, I was haunted by the beautiful mystery of a place that seemed so familiar, so accessible, yet so doggedly out of my grasp.

“Sorry, we don’t have time today”

“Maybe on the drive back?”

“Let’s definitely remember to stop off next time we come up.”

Five years of failed attempts later, while once again driving up the coast to Peregian Beach last weekend, I turned to Callum and asked, with a pleading look in my eyes, “Can we take the turnoff for the Wild Horse Mountain Lookout?”

“Sure!” he said, unaware of the significance of that one word, and (amazingly) took the turnoff leading to the landmark of mystery and imagination.

So this was it. Wild Horse Mountain was finally within my reach. Would it live up to so many years of expectations? Would it be disappointing? Would I have cheated myself out of the wonderful experience of never knowing what lay veiled beneath the mystery?

Turns out that the Wild Horse Mountain lookout is a steep kilometre’s hike up an exposed road from the car park – which in the noon, midsummer Queensland sun is none too pleasant a feat. We sweated and panted our way up, with a shared (if unspoken) mental backdrop of ‘this had better be worth it’.

The rotunda at the top catches the breeze from every angle, with panoramic views stretching from the Glasshouse Mountains to Brisbane city to the ocean across vast stretches of state forest.

Is it all you imagined it would be? God whispered in my heart, while I took in the scenery and cooled my burning face in the wind.

I honestly didn’t know. I’d been oscillating between phantasmagorical illusions of talking stallions and pessimistic expectations of mundane let-downs for so many years that this lovely (if lacking in conversant quadrupeds) vista took a moment to process.

I munched on a handful of cherries, still attempting to figure out what I made of it all. I liked it, for sure – liked that I was there with Callum, liked that the questions finally had answers, liked the place objectively for its beauty and effective capturing of much-needed wind currents.

But strangely enough, its reality – while not disappointing – was less alluring than the mystery itself had previously held.

While something continues wears a mask of unknowness, our hearts subconsciously continue to wonder whether than thing might be God. The quality of mystery awakens our curiosity, making us long to interrogate the thing and ask, “You? Is it you that will finally satisfy my restless heart?”

Life in some ways is a constant unmasking of false gods – revealing to us, little bit by little bit, that we are made for something bigger and more permanent than any of them. Transient things point us forward, and are not evil in themselves, but they are not the solution to the endless longing of which our hearts are capable.

My Europe trip last year was everything I hoped it could be – and yet I finished it feeling that I had finally unmasked a false god. I could love travel, sure – but I didn’t need to worship the idea of it any more, because even at its best it couldn’t actually satisfy my thirst for God. The relationship I’m in is everything I could have dreamed of as a little girl – and yet a constant awareness that it will never satisfy the deepest hungers of my heart for Eternity helps to unmask a false god which I could too easily be inclined to worship.

Before Europe, before dating, before Wild Horse Mountain, my heart fixated upon the mystery in each of these things, vaguely wondering if they would be the One Thing that would finally answer that deep yearning in an ultimately satisfactory way.

Funnily enough, the fact that they didn’t answer that yearning was not a disappointment. It was a reassurance and a liberation. It means I can love them for their own sake without expecting them to be God for me. It means that their value as signposts to Joy is infinitely greater, because I’m able to read that they say “This Way” rather than “You have arrived.”

I realised the other day that Mystery is a quality of God which we can only experience here on Earth. In Eternity, we shall see Him as He really is – not as a slow succession of partial Revelations, but all at once in His glory.

Here and now, though, in our finite bodies trapped in the pedagogy of Time, we’re able to wonder, to hope, and to have faith. We’re able to ask questions like ‘What lies behind those hills?’ or ‘What is the lifecycle of a glowworm?’ or ‘What comes next in my story?’

So many times I become frustrated with the Mystery of God, because it asks me to temper my longings with patience. My life-in-progress demands that I become accustomed to unknowing, limitation, uncertainty, because until I reach Heaven, there will always be unanswered questions.

But actually, there's something a bit alluring about that. It means that there will always be a ‘just around the riverbend’. There will always be questions about our lives and their meaning that are left unanswered. There will always be a Cloud of Unknowing: because God is the ultimate mystery – the final unclimbed mountain, the summation of all knowledge that we can never accumulate in a lifetime.

Familiar, accessible, but doggedly out of our grasp. 

As Grace unfolds its pedagogy in each of our lives, in accordance with our ever-growing capacity to love God, He reveals a little more of Himself. And then a little more. And then a little more.

And all the while, as we unmask false gods and search for the true, we keep asking Him, “You? Is it you that will finally satisfy my restless heart?”

I pray that I keep asking Him that question until the day I can stand before His face and heart Him speak the words, “I AM.”

AMDG.