The biggest gold mine in the world is Muruntau in Uzbekistan. Level after level goes increasingly deeper into a giant, terraced hole. It’s a literal journey to the center of the earth. The mine yielded an estimated 82 tons of gold in 2021. Obviously, an ongoing hunt for wealth drives the effort there.
And so do all the studies and inquiries of our world. The quest for intellectual, creative, and technological treasures plunges us ever more deeply into human knowledge. The research has been a profitable endeavor. Life spans have lengthened, and communication and travel have improved.
I get a distinct impression, though, that we could drill all the way to the earth’s core and never even recognize “the mother lode.” It’s like an ancient tribesman who prizes a forest area for its firewood. He has developed a system for collecting dry branches during certain seasons of the year–taxing work that consumes much of his time. But he is occasionally annoyed by the thick, tarry substance oozing up out of cracks in the ground there. He ignores it except to curse the stain it leaves on his shoes. The potential and properties of that seepage oil will continue to be unknown throughout his entire life and those of his children and grandchildren while they busy themselves with gathering their firewood.
Similarly, there are things even our most advanced knowledge cannot and will not ever perceive.
Jesus told the people, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3).
Where they could engage in meteorology and interpret the weather out on the horizon, they missed the ultimate “sign of the times”—Jesus, standing in front of them.
And today, while we can speak of how to harness many of the physical laws around us, including how to split the atom, we cannot probe or quantify certain other things.
Job, the Old Testament patriarch, summarized our undertakings and accomplishments:
“Man puts his hand to the flinty rock and overturns mountains by the roots. He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eye sees every precious thing. He dams up the streams so that they do not trickle, and the thing that is hidden he brings out to light” (28:10-11).
But having said this, Job just as quickly says,
“But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its worth, and it is not found in the land of the living” (vv. 12-13).
Something lies beyond the microscope and computer chip. Human gaze cannot quantify it. However, “God understands the way to it, and he knows its place” (v. 23).
Adding a further thought from the New Testament, that place is “Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2:2-3).
In other words, the ultimate trove is in a Person. It’s not at the bottom of a giant hole made by industrial-strength excavators.
I admire smart people–folks who can invent things, figure them out, or fix them. I’m a fellow from Small Town, USA, who hasn’t invented a thing. At the same time, you could say I’ve discovered something. But it wasn’t because I was smart enough to find it. In fact, I came across Jesus out of my weakness. I was deeply hurt. Broken. Clueless. Tired. Hardly up for some new adventure called “Exploring the Christian Faith.”
This is where it all begins when we stop and cry out to another, when the insane digging gives way to entering a relationship with Someone.
“None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8).
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
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