“Ah! sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee. Ah! I know at last the secret of it all!” Victor Herbert penned these lyrics back in 1910. I sat enthralled years later as a child watching and hearing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald sing the song of life and love made popular in the movie, “Naughty Marietta.” The lyrics continue, “All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning, the burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall…”
Sounds more like someone seeking God to fill the emptiness of life. Where to turn? I searched the scriptures to learn more about the mysteries of the God who reveals His secrets to one searching to uncover the hidden, to discover the meaning of life.
Let’s begin with the Old Testament and Daniel, the man most known for his visions and being thrown into the lions' den. God gave Daniel a divine revelation in order to manifest the King of heaven to King Nebuchadnezzar.
“But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.” (Daniel 2:28) Daniel then proceeded to first tell the dream and then the intrepretation, after which the King, falling on his face before Daniel then proclaimed, “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret.” (Daniel 2:47)
In the New Testament after speaking a parable about the sower to the multitude, we find Jesus, with His apostles gathered around Him, “And He said to them, ‘To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables…’” (Mark 4:11) Are we in or out, today?
Later, Jesus tells His disciples and us, “For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.” (Mark 4:22)
To show us how we are to understand, Jesus gives us a clue in this prayer, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.” (Matthew 11:25) There is then hope for most of us right there in our child-like ways!
The apostle Paul has much to say about the “mysteries” of life in Christ as if to challenge us today to uncover those hidden truths of Scripture. The clues are all there. We are meant to persistently seek and search out these mysteries so that we are able to know the God who wants to reveal Himself to us! Here is another clue to Spiritual wisdom:
“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory…But god has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”
(For an eye and ear opener, read the entire Chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians)
The “sweet mystery of life” the lyricist may have found, supposedly in a “true love”, is surpassed when one uncovers a much greater, sweeter mystery, one that lasts for all eternity! “…the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:26, 28)
