How do you explain the unexplainable? How do you measure the immeasurable? How deep is the unfathomable?
I rarely use the word, “unfathomable.” It’s a great word, but for some reason I trip over it when saying the word out loud. But I’m using the word a lot lately, and there is a specific reason why. My son Elijah used that word in one of the last things he wrote. He was writing about life.
“Think of how Unfathomable the life we live really is… ” (Elijah 2014)
When something is unfathomable, it is by definition vast and limitless. When something is unfathomable, it is incapable of being fully measured. It cannot be totally understood. We will never be able to completely explain it. I guess if anything fits into that category, it would be the life we live.
Who among us can solve the problem of explaining the unexplainable? At least we can appreciate that humans are the only living things interested in trying to understand life. We want to know how we got here. We try to figure out what we are supposed to be doing while we are here. And eventually we all want to know where we go after our life here ends.
Each question leads to a deeper dive into the unfathomable mysteries of life. It seems the more questions we ask, the more questions we encounter.
What else would we consider to be unfathomable? The universe seems pretty unfathomable. Elijah loved to gaze at the night sky and marvel at the vast expanse of the stars. I wish I had spent more time doing that with him.
But at the top of the list of everything unfathomable would be God Himself. After all, He is the one who created the vast universe. He is the one who gave us our unfathomable life. The scripture puts this in perspective for us: “Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD…?” (Isaiah 40:13).
How many of us pause long enough to appreciate how spectacular and marvelous is life itself? We may not fully understand how we got here. We may all struggle to live our lives with purpose and value. We may all long to know what it’s like to experience eternal life. But the starting point of our understanding is humility. We may not have the answers, but we have been given a solution. We can turn our attention to the one who holds all the answers: God Himself.
Some of us will spend a lifetime trying to figure that out. Elijah hoped we wouldn’t wait that long. His passion was that we make God our starting point.
“A life this unexplainable only can lead to one true explanation… God!” (Elijah 2014)
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-Ken Buchanan
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