Beyond

"...through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which rise the soft rounded slopes of mightier mountains, surge beyond surge, immense and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve, accumulating in the sky until their garment of forest is exchanged for the shadowy fold of slumbrous morning cloud, above which the utmost silver peak shines islanded and alone."

--Modern Painters, Part II sec. IV, by John Ruskin (1846), speaking of Turner's painting

BEYOND: on the farther side, farther away, at a greater distance.

Our word comes from "BE + geondan (Old English for "the farther side"), geond was descended from Old Teutonic jand. Geond came down in English as "yon" and "yonder".

Few words stir me to dream like this one. These two syllables draw my thoughts away, over known territory and borders, to distant lands and people. Years ago, I used to read the Arabian Nights under my blankets with a flashlight, pondering over exotic names like Baghdad and Scheherazade.

Beyond is significant because being human means being curious about our world. What exists beyond these borders? What lies beyond this decision?

There's something good about wanting to know. Exploring is a God-given trait, as people have learned to build and cultivate and invent and discover. Without it, we cannot take care of this world nor live full lives.

Yet mere curiosity can be a cold and perishable hunger; a burrowing worm in the mind, to know more than it should. As Eve doubtless thought, and Adam wondered: will this forbidden fruit take me beyond my limits and make me just like God? Will I know everything like God, so that nothing is beyond knowing, and I have no boundaries at all? The ultimate gratification, where nothing is beyond me, because I am the sum of all things. Able to swallow worlds in my hunger.

This is the perilous cliff which our ancestors stood upon, this precipice of pride and ego; and fell. Lest I seem too dramatic, I can sadly say that the same hunger lives in me, in one form or another. It lives in us all...

... and it makes us less human, not more. I am not supposed to desire knowledge beyond my life's calling, the tasks I am given. To want more makes the soul shrink into a spiritual raisin, shriveled by one's passion for preeminence.

I think, from a Biblical point of view, that God is so different from us, that we should take comfort that (while indeed, much is beyond us) nothing is beyond God. As it should be. What would render us a husk of our true selves actually magnifies God as the Lord of life, for He alone should know all things.

I will leave you with these lyrics from Rich Mullins' song, "Nothing is Beyond You."

Where could I go, where could I run

Even if I found the strength to fly

And if I rose on the wings of the dawn

And crashed through the corner of the sky

If I sailed past the edge of the sea

Even if I made my bed in Hell

Still there You would find me

'Cause nothing is beyond You

You stand beyond the reach

Of our vain imaginations

Our misguided piety

The heavens stretch to hold You

And deep cries out to deep

Singing that nothing is beyond You

Nothing is beyond You

Time cannot contain You

You fill eternity

Sin can never stain You

Death has lost its sting

And I cannot explain the way

You came to love me

Except to say that nothing is beyond You

Nothing is beyond You

If I should shrink back from the light

So I can sink into the dark

If I take cover and I close my eyes

Even then You would see my heart

And You'd cut through all my pain and rage

The darkness is not dark to You

And night's as bright as day

Nothing is beyond You

You stand beyond the reach

Of our vain imaginations

Our misguided piety

The heavens stretch to hold You

And deep cries out to deep

Singing that nothing is beyond You

Nothing is beyond You