It’s fair to say most people enjoy a good mystery. Whether it’s a book or a movie, we sit on the edge of our seats, eager to see how it ends. Some of us even play detective, piecing together clues to solve the “whodunit” before the final reveal. But some mysteries simply can’t be solved. We can try and speculate, yet in the end we’re left without a certain answer—only faith.

Consider the Bible. Some argue it was written solely by men who invented God to control others. Others believe that while human authors wrote the words, they did so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Is that a mystery? Many would say yes—but that’s the nature of faith, isn’t it?

In a recent conversation, my granddaughter’s husband told me that although he believes in God, he doesn’t believe the Bible because it was written by men. Later I asked him: when he shows a house he built to potential customers, does he call it the house he built or the house his subcontractors built? He answered that his subcontractors built it under his direction, so it’s still the house he built. You can probably see my point. He did too—and said, “I get your point. I never thought about it that way.”

The word “mystery” appears several times in the Bible, pointing to realities we can’t fully explain or understand. That’s why we call it faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Sadly, many people want neat answers—clear boundaries and absolutes, things they can touch and measure. Yet the mystery of faith can be all of that and more, if we’re willing to step into it and explore its depths. But with any mystery, we’re often tempted to notice only what we expect—or what we’ve trained ourselves to see. Think about it.