I didn’t expect to fall in love with Iceland. Being an English major with a love of British novels and the Beatles, I chose the Harding University in England program to spend three months in London; my one week on a tiny island in the Atlantic came almost as an afterthought. But after glaciers and volcanoes, lava fields and geothermal springs, I can honestly say that no week of my life has changed me more.
Iceland itself is actually no bigger than the state of Arkansas, but I’ve never been anyplace that made me feel so small. I felt that insignificance most at Skógafoss, one of Iceland’s tallest waterfalls. Some of my friends chose to climb what seemed like hundreds of steps to overlook the falls from above, but I never made it to the top. I found myself rooted to a spot in the black sand near the bottom, mesmerized by the full 60 meters of pounding white water and the hand that carved its path.
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
I left the United States with a passport, two large suitcases and the same doubts and questions about faith that I’ve been kicking around for months. I would love to tell you that I left Iceland with all these doubts resolved and a crystal-clear picture of God’s will for my life, but that’s not what happened. If anything, I left with more questions— but also with an extra dose of peace and perspective.
When Job faced his crisis of faith (one much more severe than mine), he petitioned God for answers but was left empty-handed. Out of a powerful whirlwind, the Lord scolded him: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? … I will ask you, and you instruct me!” The implication seems to be that Job couldn’t understand the answers even if God offered them; they exist outside the realm of human comprehension. Job’s response – the response Jehovah asks for – is simple wonder, and the acceptance that God is God. “I am insignificant,” he said in resignation. “What can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth.”
During my whirlwind week in Iceland, as I stood icebound in the heart of a glacier, as I overlooked glass-clear rivers, as I gazed through the torrent of a waterfall at the emerald green countryside, I saw a God I am incapable of comprehending. I felt the terrible power fueling the fires of Eyjafjallajökull volcano, but also the gentleness that sculpted the Dwarves’ Cliffs from basalt in the sun-kissed hills. He is a paradox — fire and ice, fury and love, justice and grace — and I do not understand Him. But as Madeleine L’Engle says, “a comprehensible God is no more than an idol.” I have no desire to serve a God so small that He makes sense to me.
I don’t know much, and truthfully, perhaps I’m not meant to. But I know enough to look on His work with wonder, and admit that God is God.
I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted
Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (Job 42:2-3)
