This story could be a metaphor.  What if, in our daily experience, we waited for all the facts to be in and all the risks to subside, before proceeding with our lives?  What if we needed all contingencies to be named and outcomes guaranteed before making a decision?  What if we waited to marry, have children, or choose careers and vocations based on knowing all the answers to our questions?  Would there be any room for mystery, where grace dwells?  Any place to be surprised by joy?  By taking the sign down, that ranger preserved the possibility of amazement by hikers at seeing the wonders of nature further up the trail.  The price of joy and amazement is often risk and uncertainty.

What about Jesus?  Did he know everything that would happen to him on his walk of life?  Was he immune from anxiety?  I don’t believe so.  He was fully human, after all.  So how did he cope with his uncertainties?  Scripture tells us that he deeply internalized and freely embraced his mission, but he probably didn’t have all the answers.  Because the stakes were high, the imponderables were large.  But Jesus, the man, loved and utterly trusted his God, his Abba.  And because of that mutual, inseparable love, whatever Jesus did or didn’t know of the dangers and heartache ahead, he went forward in trust. 

And for us, what does it mean to move through our lives with imponderables?  Can we trust in mystery?  The mystery of life - and death?  Can we trust in God’s love even if our knowledge of the divine is only intuitive at best?  Can we relax our grip on certitude and control?  Can we trust in Christ’s promise, even when the going gets rough?  Can we let go, just as Jesus did, in his final moments of life on earth?

Annie Dillard, in her thoughtful exploration of faith in Holy the Firm, writes that the Hebrews have a myth that angels belong to nine different orders of rank.  Cherubs, who are ranked second from the top, possess perfect knowledge of God.  But the highest angelic beings are Seraphs.  Though they may lack perfect knowledge, they are aflame with the love of God.

I believe love trumps knowledge in this ancient paradigm - as well as in our hearts today.  God is unknowable, but in moments of grace we sense that we are held in a divine embrace.  “Thou whom I do not know, but whose I am,” says Dag Hammarskjold.  God’s love promises to set us free from our compulsive and cautionary need to know and control, so that we, too, might finally let go.