Our Mysterious God

Her torch that lit the way and her arm that held it proudly toward the sky had both arrived in America in 1876, but the remaining 350 pieces of our beloved lady from France arrived in New York in 1885—350 individual pieces that needed to be put back together again.

The man who sculpted the Statue of Liberty, Auguste Bartholdi, had created the map that would put her back together upon her arrival to America’s shore. The French workers who disassembled the statue created wooden frames to secure each piece for its ocean voyage, numbering or marking with a symbol each one so that they could be put together properly. Some of the pieces were warped during the journey and had to be refitted once in New York. But the day came in the fall of 1886 when the Statue of Liberty was presented in her glory.

Imagine opening those wooden crates and laying out 350 individual pieces that would eventually make up the 111 foot statue weighing 450,000 pounds… Where to start! But there was Bartholdi’s map to follow, and the mystery of the monumental task was solved, piece by piece.

When it comes to understanding the mysterious ways of God, there is no map with numbers and symbols to show where every piece should go. We are called to place our trust in Him, believing that His ways are perfect. There is a beautiful picture of this trust in the Book of Ecclesiastes:

God’s ways are as mysterious as the pathway of the wind and as the manner in which a human spirit is infused into the little body of a baby while it is yet in its mother’s womb. Ecclesiastes 11:5

The ways of the invisible breath from above that moves the trees with its power, or the beginnings of the eternal spirit inside an unborn baby cannot be understood by the human mind, and the ways of God are not ours to understand either. This is the beauty of Who God is. Perhaps we will have those answers in heaven, but there is something of wonder in serving our God of mysteries, simply knowing that He knows!