Knowing The Unknowable

Ephesians 3:14-21

May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. (Ephesians 3:19)

JOHN WESLEY ONCE SAID he felt his heart “strangely warmed” as he listened to someone at a prayer meeting read an excerpt from Luther’s commentary on Romans. He couldn’t put his finger on what was happening; he just knew the Spirit was at work, and faith was growing in him. That’s often the case in our encounters with the truths of God. We know what we do not yet understand and believe what we cannot yet explain. It isn’t that God’s truth is irrational, only that it often works in us before our rational minds catch up to it. We experience him in extra-rational ways.

Paul must have understood this dynamic well, since he prayed for the Ephesians to know the kind of love that surpasses knowledge. Though we can certainly grasp the incongruity of such a request, we’re also aware that the Holy Spirit can help us know what cannot be known, to experience what cannot be fully explained. His gifts for us, including his love, are infinite. Our hearts and minds are not. If we are ever going to grow in our relationship with God, we will have to get comfortable with the idea of knowing things that are beyond us. Our brains will have to be content tasting divine truths they cannot fully hold.

Many people call such knowledge superstition because they cannot map it out, put it in a test tube, or prove it in a formula. Even so, they crave it. Every human heart longs for transcendence. A hardened skeptic still feels overwhelmed by the vastness of space and the majesty of mountains and seas. Whispers of divine creativity and wisdom move everyone, even if they don’t recognize them as divine. But anyone who has experienced the transcendent truth of God’s nature knows things that no mind can grasp. And that love—that divine experience—can pass through barriers no words can ever pierce.

{Jesus, may I know the fullness of your love even beyond my understanding, and may others see it in my eyes, hear it in my voice, and feel it in my heartbeat. Amen.