Quotes about Mystery

No man can see God in this life and live because His glory would annihilate our poor, weak human nature.

Where did God come from? It's certainly more complicated than trying to figure out where, say, Barry Manilow was born.

Many people find the universe confusing - it's not.

8"Forp My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9"Forq as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

There will be times when you do not comprehend why He allows certain things to occur, and that is to be expected.

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

If we go to the depths of anything, we will begin to knock upon something substantial, "real," and with a timeless quality to it. We will move from the starter kit of "belief" to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, (3) or stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty.

Remember, mystery isn't something that you cannot understand—it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, "I've got it." Always and forever, mystery gets you!

Perhaps the True Self--and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)--will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion.

If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community.

And we must—absolutely must—maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.