It once was reported on the news that one of our Mariner spacecraft was expected to make a new discovery. Billions of miles away on the borders of our solar system, the Mariner was expected to discover a new planet or star or even a black hole. Astronomers have long speculated about the existence of another planet in our solar system to explain the irregularity of the orbit of planet Uranus. It seems to be lured by the pull of the gravity of another body, the lure of the unseen.

In the winter, while walking his dog, my friend was always amazed at an unusual phenomenon. All the windows and doors of houses were closed. He was walking silently and his dog was noiseless, yet dogs in the houses appeared at windows to bark as he passed by. Apparently, they were responding to the power of some unseen force, the power of high pitched sound, inaudible to us, but very real to dogs.

I read recently of birds who respond to the power of the unseen. First, the birds call to each other and sing to each other in songs audible to human ears. But then, observers tell us, they seem to move into a song pitched above the human capacity to hear. The whole world is full of instances where what is seen or readily heard is only part of the reality. Whether we speak of sound or the spectrum of light or the migratory instincts of birds or life instincts of animals or radio waves or gamma rays or the universe itself, there is evidence of the reality of the unseen.

Indeed, some of our most cherished experiences are not readily visible. Watch a teenage girl spend hours preparing for her big date, or watch a young man groom himself meticulously for his beloved, or observe the touch of a married couple endeared to each other for fifty years, and we witness the power of the unseen.

It was the experience of the power of unseen realities which led Paul to assert, "We look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). If Paul as a Jew had first experienced the seen things of power, recognition, success, a sense of achievement and widespread acclamation, he now was experiencing, as a Christian, the seen things of mockery, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, and flogging. If once he seemed on a clear path to success and acclaim, he now seemed to be on a path of hardship and suffering. If once his career was well-plotted and well-admired, now he met the scorn of enemies and the ridicule of friends, and yet Paul asserted he looked to things unseen rather than things seen, for seen things are temporal, but unseen things are eternal.

What then are some of the eternal unseen things to which we should look?

I

For one thing, we would assert with Paul that the mystery of God is greater and more real than the apparent realities of the temporal world.

This is not to say that the physical, material world is unreal and unimportant. It is rather to say that it is not of ultimate importance. This is not to say that what we see is total illusion. It is rather to say that it is transient compared to the abiding reality of the mystery of God.

The late scientist, Jacob Bronowski, wrote that earlier in the twentieth century when scientists had primarily a materialistic, mechanistic view of the universe, they presumed they were about to discover the basic particle of existence and thereby explain the ultimate mystery. But each time they approached, said Bronowski, reality, which seemed within their grasp, lurched away into infinity. Once again, said Bronowski, they were on the edge of mystery.

By mystery, we do not mean something that is unknowable, but something that cannot be possessed. By mystery, we do not mean a reality that can never be experienced; we mean instead, a reality that leads us always into larger and larger spheres of understanding. Mystery is something like the shores of the ocean. We touch the reality but never embrace or encompass it. Like the call of the sea to the adventurer, mystery calls us into the adventure of discovery and learning.

Consequently, when Paul was opened up again to the mystery of God, he could never again embrace his narrow creeds and content himself with his self-righteous dogmatisms. As a result, Paul had a new openness about him. He was no longer rigid and unbending. Released from the role of obnoxious, religious snob, Paul now emitted warmth and humanity and humility that made him an agent of the very mystery that lured him on toward the unseen but real.

Following in Paul's footsteps we too look to the unseen mystery of God that beckons us from our stuffy rooms wherein we enclose ourselves. The mystery of God lures us from pride and arrogance and deflates our presumption and snobbery and makes us more human and approachable. By acknowledging the mystery of God we are released from the pretense of having all the answers to become fellow pilgrims in pursuit of a deeper understanding of life and the purposes of God. Such is the lure of the unseen.

II

By looking to the unseen we are reminded that spiritual reality is greater than material reality.

The prophets of old have asserted this truth time and again. Humankind, they said, looks at external, material things, but God looks on the heart. We are impressed with fortunes and political power, but nations are to God like a drop in the bucket, says Isaiah, and princes are a delusion, says the psalmist.

Jesus asserted the same truth. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. What shall it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul? We more or less give assent to our Lord's words, but as a matter of fact too often give almost our total energy to the acquisition of this world's goods. We tend to judge a man by his net worth and speak cynically of buying and selling those with less money than ourselves.

If, in the 1960s, the youth of our nation raised seriously the questions of the meaning of life, the youth of the 1980s were most intent on knocking down the big dollars. If from time to time we are led into serious consideration of our spiritual health and destiny, we often beat a hasty retreat to the security of a materialistic self-understanding of life.

In the second century A.D., the writer of First Timothy advised: "As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy." He goes on to say that "they are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed" (1 Timothy 6:17-19).

Yet, on the practical level, our schools and colleges put most all their emphasis on intellect and hardly any on character. They stress the importance of academic achievement, but seem to care little if young people are sexually immoral or over-indulgent in alcohol. Preparation for success in business or profession is uppermost while the development of an adequate philosophy of life tends to be ignored.

Consider the practical level in marriage and family. Many couples, newly married, expend extraordinary amounts of energy to acquire material success and physical comfort. But at the same time they frequently neglect each other on the spiritual, emotional, personal level. Many a marriage has long since become empty and boring because husbands and wives, in pursuit of the external accoutrements of success, have neglected each other. They have affirmed the physical dimension but denied the spiritual.

Yet, it is precisely in the unseen spiritual depths of the human personality wherein we find the uniqueness and mystery that entice us and lead us toward richer relationships and deeper self-understanding. The materialists are forever killing to dissect, hoping to find the secret of life and love by destroying it, but the people of faith are lured by the unseen mystery of life itself to say with poet William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Or as Jesus put it, "He who saves his life loses it, but be who loses his life for my sake and the gospel's, finds it" (Mark 8:35).

III

Lastly, the lure of the unseen suggests that eternal, spiritual life is more real than temporal, physical life. Most of humanity has for centuries believed in some sort of immortality, some sort of life after death. There has been the deep feeling that there is something more, that temporal physical existence does not explain the deep yearnings within the human heart and mind. In our own time numerous people have written books about out-of-body experiences and the experiences of those who have died clinically and have been brought back to life. George Gallup, the pollster, published a book attesting to the overwhelming numbers of people who have had these experiences, and are convinced that there is indeed life after death.

Nevertheless, many of us live as though this life were it and that we had better squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of it while we can. Consequently, we have many people rushing headlong into hedonism, into narcissism, into the mentality of "I've-got-to-do-my-thing-while-I-have-a-chance."

But, the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake is often disappointing. Philosopher John Stuart Mill once observed that pleasure and happiness are often a by-product of devotion to a higher cause. The melancholy preacher of Ecclesiastes tried every pleasure he could think of and concluded it was vanity.

The great British preacher of the nineteenth century, F. W. Robertson, observed, "There is a strange penalty which God annexes to a life of pleasure: everything appears to the worldly man as a tangled web a maze to which there is no clue." If such a man says there is nothing new under the sun, it is a result, says Robertson, of his determination to live only for excitement and pleasure. "His heart becomes so jaded by excitement that the world contains nothing for him which can awaken fresh or new emotions."

It seems many college young people today live just such a life. Many of their weekends are spent in heavy indulgence in alcohol. A typical party consists in heavy and excessive drinking coupled with the smoking of pot and the use of cocaine.

Sexual looseness and immorality are commonplace. Fueled by affluence and protected by privilege, many young people are rushing frantically toward spiritual death. Empty, bored, without deep inward purpose, they give themselves compulsively to the stimulation of every nerve ending believing therein they have life and love. Grasping desperately the seen, clutching anxiously to every physical pleasure and stimulation, the unseen and deeper realities elude them and life does indeed become vain. A sense of futility haunts them and boredom and depression begin to hold sway.

But not so with Paul. Instead, we have, he says, treasure in earthen vessels. We have within us the hope for life eternal, vouchsafed to us by the gift of God's Spirit and grace. Convinced that life was more than the body and love greater than excited nerve endings, Paul was able to endure even suffering, sometimes unbearable suffering.

Paul said, "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed ... So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 16).

Likewise with us. When we seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, when we arrange properly our priorities, then other things fall into proper perspective. When we place our faith and hope in the unseen God, the seen dimensions of life are infused with new richness and satisfaction. When we give ourselves to the development of character and spiritual depth, then we enter into new realities and receive the contentment of God's Spirit and grace.

Therefore we can say with Paul, "We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."