"What has been is exceedingly remote and mysterious.  Who can discover it?"  This piece of advice from the writer of Ecclesiastes (7:24) is well put.  Even if we manage to reconstruct, absolutely and completely, a particular event in the past, we will never be able to understand, fully, what it means in the broader flow of history and time.  Although in looking at events many thousands of years in the past we may come close to divining how they fit into the span of human adventure, we likely will never be able to see precisely the full extent of what they mean.  Causes are many and often recondite, and effects, rippling as they do through many centuries, are elusive.  That's the mystery, that's the wonder.
     But mystery is good.  It tells us, as we continue careening into our various tomorrows, the many futures before us, that whatever future we build, we do well to remind ourselves that we will always be creatures of our historical contexts and times, however lengthy these may be, and that we cannot possibly hope to independently shape or fathom the full meaning of our destiny.  As the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, we "see in a mirror dimly," that is, we cannot hope to see or understand anything beyond the present moment (and even the present moment, once we experience it, slides instantly into the mists of the past).  We're locked in a mystery far greater than we can possibly imagine.
     On the other hand, if there were no mystery, there would be no meaning.  Denying mystery is denying that existence has any meaning at all.