Doubt

An Ambiguous Journey

shelliwilliams Awareness, Doubt, Faith, Journey, New Life

AmbiguityScripture Text:  Genesis 2: 15-17

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Well, you know the rest of the story.  The first couple ate from the forbidden tree (which, most artistic renditions notwithstanding, was not depicted as an apple tree) and the ambiguous journey began.  Life is full of ambiguities; faith is full of ambiguities; and this season of Lent is fraught with ambiguity.  We begin the season in the desert wilderness where Jesus, the fully human one, the one who we so try to emulate in every way is tempted.  Jesus, tempted?  Are you kidding me?  Then the ministry begins as he gathers this sort of wild and motley crew of followers who seem to be somewhat confused and completely inexperienced.  They then spend a couple of years hanging around this lake in the region of Galilee essentially trying to get people to wake up and look at themselves and their lives and in the process, they continually antagonize the religious establishment.  This would be the religious establishment of Jesus’ own religion, the one into which he was born.  And then after years of ministry, the scene moves to Jerusalem, to the holy city, the place of the Temple.  And there, there Jesus is tried, convicted, and put to death.  Ambiguity doesn’t begin to describe it.  The journey we take is not a straight and pre-paved pathway.  It is fraught with questions and the perils of ambiguity that challenge us and call us to go deeper into the journey and, at the same time, to go deeper into ourselves.

But Ray Anderson says that “spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity.”  In other words, perhaps it’s MEANT to be this way.  It is part of our faith journey.  It is the way that we wind our way to God.  Because, think about it, what if the story was different?  What if the first couple had not eaten of the forbidden tree and had instead spent their lives living in some sort of utopian paradise we affectionately call “The Garden”?  Sure, they would have been good children and all but they never would have grown.  They never would have grown to understand God not as a rule-maker but as one who calls us forth into life, ambiguous though it may be.  And if Jesus had not been tempted?  Well, what good would that do us?  We would never even understand the perils that humanity faces.  And what if the disciples had been a group of impeccably well-trained rabbinical seminary professors who had no need to massage their own needs and egos? (No comment.)  And what if the religious establishment had just accepted Jesus and his new way of seeing and the Passion would never have transpired and Jesus had died of old age sometime in his late 40’s.  What if the journey were straight and predictable?  Well, we wouldn’t need faith.  We wouldn’t need to grow.  We would be wonderful little rule-followers with no need for spirituality. Hey, we probably never really would have gotten out of the garden.  And think what we would have missed!  Maybe this is a good lesson to remember in this strange time in which our society and our politics seems to have landed.  Maybe the ambiguities should prompt us to journey, to question, to change.

Lent (and life) is indeed ambiguous.  There is wilderness and city, darkness and light, temptation and grace, repentance and forgiveness, anointing and betrayal, dust and wine, death and life.  Maybe Lent is an ambiguous journey to teach us how to live, to teach us how to traverse the ambiguities that are part of our faith journey.  Ambiguity is not bad.  So many of us try to rid ourselves of it, try to “nail down” what life and what God means.  Is that really what you want, a God that you can explain, can “nail down”?  Do you really want a God that holds no mystery, no wonder, no awe?  And what would you do if everything about this God was explained and understood?  What if you DID have God all figured out?  Where would you be then?  You would miss this ambiguous journey, a journey of searching and questing, of broadening and growth, of corners and turns around which you will always find life anew.  You would have no need for faith, no need for spirituality.  You would have no need for God to lead you through this ambiguous journey.

Meaning does not come to us in finished form, ready-made; it must be found, created, received, constructed. We grow our way toward it.(Ann Bedford Ulanov)

On this ambiguous journey, think of those things that you have found anew.  Think of the life that they give.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

When Doubts Seep In

shelliwilliams Doubt, Faith, Seeing , , , ,

Seeing Through the FogScripture Text:  John 20: 19-29 (Easter 2A)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Well, it’s the 2nd Sunday after Easter, so it must be Doubting Thomas Sunday!  We read it every year.  We read of the disciples in hiding and the return of the Risen Christ, offering them the chance to see.  And part of the story is Thomas refusing to believe, refusing to accept that this really WAS Jesus.  You have to wonder what the disciples were thinking locked behind the door of their house. Was their grief just so unbearable that they couldn’t do anything else?  Were they afraid that they would be next? Were they disillusioned that things had turned out that way? Were they feeling remorse or guilt or shame at the parts that they had played (or not played, as the case may be) in the Passion Play? I suppose it’s possible that they were a little afraid of the rumors that Jesus HAD returned. After all, what would he say to THEM?  I mean, it wasn’t like they had been stellar examples of devoted followers the last few days!  But that’s not what happened. Things were going to be OK. Jesus was back. The disciples rejoiced. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them. They were sent. They became the community of Christ. And so I supposed they went off merrily praising God and being who they were called to be. This is a premise for discipleship. Jesus offered light and truth through his relationship with God. Now the disciples are called to offer light and truth through their relationship with Christ. All except Thomas. Poor Thomas. He wanted to see proof. Why couldn’t he just believe?

Personally, I think we give Thomas a bad wrap—after all, for some reason, he missed what the others had seen. (It is interesting that he was apparently the only one who had ventured outside!  It appears the others were just hiding out.) He just wanted the same opportunity—and Jesus gave that to him. He wanted to experience it. The point was that the Resurrection is not a fact to be believed, but an experience to be shared–whatever that means for us. And perhaps, part of that experience is doubt. Constructive doubt is what forms the questions in us and leads us to search and explore our own faith understanding. It is doubt that compels us to search for greater understanding of who God is and who we are as children of God.

Hans Kung is a Swiss-born theologian and writer. He says it like this: Doubt is the shadow cast by faith. One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed. At any moment it may come into action. There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Doubt is the shadow cast by faith. Faith in the resurrection does not exclude doubt, but takes doubt into itself. It is a matter of being part of this wonderful community of disciples not because God told us to but because our doubts bring us together. Examining our faith involves doubts, it requires us to learn the questions to ask. And it is in the face of doubt that our faith is born. God does not call us to a blind, unexamined faith, accepting all that we see and all that we hear as unquestionable truth; God instead calls us to an illumined doubt, through which we search and journey toward a greater understanding of God.

Frederick Buechner preached a sermon on this text entitled “The Seeing Heart”. In it, he reminds us of Thomas’ other name, the “Twin”. It was never really clear why he was called that, but Buechner says that “if you want to know who the other twin is, I can tell you. I am the other twin and, unless I miss my guess, so are you.” He goes on to say this: I don’t know of any story in the Bible that is easier to imagine ourselves into that this one from John’s Gospel because it is a story about trying to believe in Jesus in a world that is as full of shadows and ambiguities and longings and doubts and glimmers of holiness as the room where the story takes place is and as you and I are inside ourselves…To see Jesus with the heart is to know that in the long run his kind of life is the only life worth living. To see him with the heart is not only to believe in him but little by little to become bearers to each other of his healing life until we become fully healed and whole and alive within ourselves. To see him with the heart is to take heart, to grow true hearts, brave hearts, at last. (“The Seeing Heart”, by Frederic Buechner, in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons)

The truth is, doubt is a normal and expected part of faith.  Our faith is not a list of checkboxes that we just check off as we believe.  It is not a static list of what we should think or what we should know.  There is always another question after the answer or the answer just falls flat.  The questions make the answers come alive.  The questions are what open our eyes to see the Risen Christ.  And that sight is not some sort of pat, boiler plate type of sighting.  This passage shows us that Jesus shows us what we need and that we need what Jesus shows us.  It is different for everyone.  So Thomas needed something a little more tactile, something he could really hold.  Is that so bad?  I think most of us would have to admit that that might make this whole thing a little bit easier to grasp for all of us!  But maybe it’s not supposed to be easy.  Maybe faith is such that the questions should never end.  So what do we do when doubts seep in?  Go with it.  Ask more questions.  Live into the doubts.  Maybe the Truth is not in front of our face but just beyond the fog.

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them. (Thomas Merton)

Journey with your doubts and keep asking questions.  Faith is not about certainty but about the journey toward meaning and Truth, a journey with God.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

An Ambiguous Journey

shelliwilliams Awareness, Doubt, Faith, Journey, New Life

AmbiguityScripture Text:  Genesis 2: 15-17

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.  And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Well, you know the rest of the story.  The first couple ate from the forbidden tree (which, most artistic renditions notwithstanding, was not depicted as an apple tree) and the ambiguous journey began.  Life is full of ambiguities; faith is full of ambiguities; and this season of Lent is fraught with ambiguity.  We begin the season in the desert wilderness where Jesus, the fully human one, the one who we so try to emulate in every way is tempted.  Jesus, tempted?  Are you kidding me?  Then the ministry begins as he gathers this sort of wild and motley crew of followers who seem to be somewhat confused and completely inexperienced.  They then spend a couple of years hanging around this lake in the region of Galilee essentially trying to get people to wake up and look at themselves and their lives and in the process, they continually antagonize the religious establishment.  This would be the religious establishment of Jesus’ own religion, the one into which he was born.  And then after years of ministry, the scene moves to Jerusalem, to the holy city, the place of the Temple.  And there, there Jesus is tried, convicted, and put to death.  Ambiguity doesn’t begin to describe it.  The journey we take is not a straight and pre-paved pathway.  It is fraught with questions and the perils of ambiguity that challenge us and call us to go deeper into the journey and, at the same time, to go deeper into ourselves.

But Ray Anderson says that “spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity.”  In other words, perhaps it’s MEANT to be this way.  It is part of our faith journey.  It is the way that we wind our way to God.  Because, think about it, what if the story was different?  What if the first couple had not eaten of the forbidden tree and had instead spent their lives living in some sort of utopian paradise we affectionately call “The Garden”?  Sure, they would have been good children and all but they never would have grown.  They never would have grown to understand God not as a rule-maker but as one who calls us forth into life, ambiguous though it may be.  And if Jesus had not been tempted?  Well, what good would that do us?  We would never even understand the perils that humanity faces.  And what if the disciples had been a group of impeccably well-trained rabbinical seminary professors who had no need to massage their own needs and egos? (No comment.)  And what if the religious establishment had just accepted Jesus and his new way of seeing and the Passion would never have transpired and Jesus had died of old age sometime in his late 40’s.  What if the journey were straight and predictable?  Well, we wouldn’t need faith.  We wouldn’t need to grow.  We would be wonderful little rule-followers with no need for spirituality. Hey, we probably never really would have gotten out of the garden.  And think what we would have missed!

Lent is indeed ambiguous.  There is wilderness and city, darkness and light, temptation and grace, repentance and forgiveness, anointing and betrayal, dust and wine, death and life.  Maybe Lent is an ambiguous journey to teach us how to live, to teach us how to traverse the ambiguities that are part of our faith journey.  Ambiguity is not bad.  So many of us try to rid ourselves of it, try to “nail down” what life and what God means.  Is that really what you want, a God that you can explain, can “nail down”?  Do you really want a God that holds no mystery, no wonder, no awe?  And what would you do if everything about this God was explained and understood?  What if you DID have God all figured out?  Where would you be then?  You would miss this ambiguous journey, a journey of searching and questing, of broadening and growth, of corners and turns around which you will always find life anew.  You would have no need for faith, no need for spirituality.  You would have no need for God to lead you through this ambiguous journey.

Meaning does not come to us in finished form, ready-made; it must be found, created, received, constructed. We grow our way toward it.(Ann Bedford Ulanov)

On this ambiguous journey, think of those things that you have found anew.  Think of the life that they give.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Advent 4A: All of the Above

shelliwilliams Bethlehem, CREATION, Doubt, Faith ,

Winding PathLectionary Old Testament Passage for Reflection:  Isaiah 7: 10-16

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

During this season of Advent this year, we have read texts that get louder and louder with prophetic messages of what is to come.  This is the thing of which Christmas’s are made.  And now we read of the signs and wonders that were shown to the House of David.  “Here, listen people, there is a young woman with child.  She shall bear a son and the world will change.”  That’s essentially what it says.  But wait a minute!  We always read this as a prophetic sign of what will come, a prophet’s vision of the coming of Christ, Immanuel.  But, read it again.  This is in the present tense.  The young woman IS with child.  (as in already)  So, which is it?  Is it a child born immediately after this writing or are we talking about the birth of Jesus?  After all, the writer known as Matthew depicted it differently.  Is it then or is it later?  Yes.  All of the above.

The sign is a child.  The child’s name, Immanuel (or “God with us”) reinforces the divine promise to deliver the people from sure demise.  The child is born of a young woman, the Hebrew “almah”, which means a young woman of marriageable age.  Many scholars think that the young woman may have been Ahaz’s wife and her son the future king Hezekiah.If the author had wanted to depict the woman as a virgin, the word “betulah” would have been used.  But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word was translated as “parthenos” or “virgin”.  So the writer of The Gospel According to Matthew understood the verse as a prediction of the birth of Jesus.  And then all those translators that came after that capitalized on that notion, perhaps in an effort to explain the unexplainable, to rid the text of the ambiguities that were probably meant to be there in the first place.

So, which is it?  Is it a virgin or a young woman?  Is it talking about Hezekiah or Jesus?  Is it what the writer known as Isaiah probably wrote or what the writer known as Matthew assumed or what the later redactors translated?  Yes.  All of the above.  The text and, indeed, the whole Bible is ambiguous at best.  Who are we kidding?  Faith is ambiguous.  It encompasses surety and doubt, light and darkness, life and death.  I don’t really get wrapped up in what “really” happened.  It doesn’t bother me if this is actually talking about Hezekiah.  But it was part of the Matthean writer’s tradition.  It meant something to him.  Somewhere in the words, in the text of his faith, he saw God.  He felt God.  To him, it mean Immanuel.  And so what better way to depict the first century nativity story that we love?  The coming of God WAS foretold–over and over and over again–through sacred stories told and shared by a waiting people.  It continues to be told, the story of God who breathed Creation into being, who entered the very Creation that held the God-breath, and who comes into each of our lives toward the glorious fulfillment of all that was meant to be.

I don’t think that God ever intended to lay it all out for us like some sort of lesson for us to memorize.  God doesn’t call us to have it all figured out but rather to live it, to open our eyes to all the sign and wonders of the world, to all the ways that God walks with us, to all the ways that God calls us to follow, to become.  All of the above, the obvious and the ambiguous, are part of the Truth that God reveals (whether or not our human minds can fathom it as “true”).  We are about to begin our journey to Bethlehem.  It is a road that is filled with ambiguities–loss and finding, sorrow and joy, fear and assurance, doubts and fears, a manger and a cross.  But along the way are signs of the God who is always with us, Immanuel, who carries us from moment to moment and from eon to eon with the promise of new life.  Let us go and see this thing that the Lord has made known–you know, all of the above.  It is this for which we were made.

If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us into [God’s] superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely close-hugged truths…we have misunderstood the words of Christianity. (Karl Rahner)

On prisoners of darkness the sun begins to rise, the dawning of forgiveness upon the sinner’s eyes, to guide the feet of pilgrims along the paths of peace, O bless our God and Savior with songs that never cease. (Michael Perry)

Reflection:  What are the things that are ambiguous for you in the story?  How do they really change the story for you?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Dancing in the Rain

shelliwilliams Darkness, Disruption, Doubt, Drought, Faith, Healing, JESUS, Presence of God, Suffering, Transformation
Image from “Singing in the Rain” (1952)
(with Gene Kelly)

Lectionary Passage:  John 6: 1-21
To read this passage online, go to http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+6:1-21&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

We love this story.  (And they must have loved it in the first century because the writers of all four gospels chose to include it their unique account of the Good News of Jesus Christ.) Yes, we like the notion of Jesus providing everything we need, bursting in just when we are at the end of our ropes, just when we need help the most, and fixing the ails of our life (or at least feeding us lunch!).

But notice (don’t you hate that…yes, I’m about to ruin your image of super-hero Jesus pulling lunch out of a hat or whatever we thought he did!) that the story never says that the boy’s lunch was the ONLY food there.  Perhaps there were some people holding back what they had brought, afraid to offer it for community consumption because, after all, what if they ran out?  What if they needed it tomorrow or the next day or after they retire?  So, perhaps the miracle lies not in some sort of image of Jesus creating something from nothing but rather in the little boy himself.  He was first, freely offering what he had to Jesus and the Disciples to do whatever they needed to do with it.  Now, note what was in the little boy’s lunch–barley bread and fish.  Barley is a very inexpensive and somewhat “unglamourous” grain and fish were plentiful.  After all, they were right next to this huge lake.  (Just to get it in your head, the “Sea” of Galilee is actually a huge lake.)  In other words, this was the lunch of the poor.  The little boy was more than likely not from a family of means.  Perhaps his mom had lovingly packed all they had into his lunch so that her son could have this experience of seeing this great man Jesus of whom they had only heard.  But before that ever happened, the little boy stood and offered everything he had.

And, then, well you know how it goes.  The person next to him saw what he had done, thinking that no longer could he now with a clear conscience keep what he had brought tucked away.  And then the person next to that person saw him offer what he had.  It went on and on, a veritable Spirit moving through the crowd.  The message is right.  It WAS a miracle!  And when they had finished eating, they realized that it wasn’t that there was enough for all.  There was more!  There were leftovers that were then gathered into baskets.  Maybe they were for later.  Maybe they were for those who needed it.  Or maybe they were offered as holy doggie bags to remind us that God always gives us way more than we really need. 

So what about those of us who feel that we need to be prepared for the next storm that is coming around the bend?  Well, keep reading.  The passage goes on to say that the disciples started across the lake in the darkness.  And, sure enough, the storm began to rage–blowing winds, crashing waves, beating sheets of rain bearing down upon them.  Wouldn’t you know?  See, this is what we were afraid of!  But, there is Jesus.  “Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid.”  What is interesting is that the account never says that Jesus calmed the storm.  Jesus calmed the disciples.  Jesus reminded the disciples that no matter what, no matter how hungry or unprepared they are, no matter what storms come up unexpectedly, they are not alone.  It is truly a story of extraordinary abundance.

I was going to write today on the David and Bathsheeba story but I got up early this morning to get a drink of water.  And standing at the window in my kitchen, I saw the words on a plaque I have on the window sill:  “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass.  It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”  (I looked it up and the quote is attributed to Vivian Green.)  It’s a great thought.  Jesus is not a super hero that performs unexplainable miracles or plucks us out of the storms of life.  Jesus is much more.  When the storms come, when the winds rage, and when we just think we just don’t have enough for what’s coming, God invites us to dance, holding us until we find the rhythm that is deep within us and know the steps ourselves.

So, keep dancing!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

For those of you who are reading this through the St. Paul’s ESPACE link, welcome!  And for those who get this as a “blog” email, yes, I’m finally back!  I’m going to try to maybe do this 2-3 times a week.  Keep on me!  🙂  Shelli

With the Confidence of the Children of God

shelliwilliams Doubt, LENT, Surety

Confidence…do we really think of that as relating to our faith?  Or do we assume that it is part of faith itself?  What does it mean to be confident in our faith?  What does it mean to pray or to live “with the confidence of the children of God”?

Confidence in faith is a funny thing.  We are told in this season of Lent that we are to be humble, submissive.  So where does confidence come into the picture?  It has nothing to do with a lack of doubt–doubt is part of faith, or we would not be real. So what is confidence in the faith?  Our United Methodist liturgy includes “with the confidence of the children of God” as an introductory phrase to The Lord’s Prayer before the Eucharist.  What does that mean?  With what confidence do we dare pray the prayer of our Lord?  Is it an assurance that is so profound that we can do nothing else?  What does it mean to have “confidence as the childen of God?”

So, what does it mean to pray, to live, to be “with the confidence of the children of God?”  ARE the children of God confident?  Do the children of God REALLY believe that God has their best interest at heart or do the children of God try desperately to control how Creation treats them?  But confidence has little to do with ability.  Confidence is about assurance, about seeing things in a different way.   Confidence is not surety that something is the way is seems;  rather, it is about trust, trust that God is God.

So, then, let us pray with the confidence of the children of God…Let us pray with the assurance not that everything will turn out alright, but that God is God.


On this twentieth day of Lenten observance, think about what it means to be a confident Christian.  Let us pray with the confidence of the children of God…

Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

And Hear the Angels Sing!

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Christmas Eve, Doubt, Mystery
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though youa are small
among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one
who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

The day is almost upon us.  We’ve got presents wrapped and under the tree and your kitchen probably smells like the cookies that just came out of the oven (or perhaps a tastefully-chosen cinnamon and eggnog candle that mimics the same effect.)  Here at St. Paul’s, we’re approaching the end of the week of frenzy that has included a mad scramble to make sure we have all the information for the 9,846 different bulletins that are needed over the next few weeks. (Well, maybe that’s a gross exageration, but you get the idea!)  Plans are in place.  I think we’re ready…

Really?  We do this every year.  We walk through Christmas sort of like we’re preparing for a very familiar play.  The sets are in place; the costumes are ironed; the lines are memorized.  In those days a decree went out… Mary and Joseph get to Bethlehem at the appropriate time and the innkeeper, following the lines, tells them that there’s no room.  The baby shows up on cue and we light our candles and sing Silent Night and then hang around with the shepherds while we wait a week for The Wisemen to make their appearance.  And then we go back to our lives.  Really?  So, how’s that mystery thing working for you?

God doesn’t usually show up on cue or in the way we’ve planned for God to show up.  Perhaps God shows up when we’ve gone back to our lives.  God tends to show up not where the beckoning is loudest but where the need is greatest.  God comes when our questions are so overwhelming that we begin to doubt and gives the Divine a face and a name.  God comes when the world is not prepared, when the world, mired in oppression and poverty and greed, has not yet gotten around to cleaning itself up and making itself presentable, when the world has made no room and so God makes a home in a place that we assumed was downright godforsaken and bathes it in light.  God comes into our darkness and illumines our way.  God comes in mystery not to confuse us or make it harder to believe but to give us a taste of the transcendent mystery and amazing miracle that is part of us all.  God will come when and where and in the way that God will come.  And more than likely it will be outside of the box we’ve built for God.  When you realize that you do not know, it is there that you will finally see Emmanuel, the God who has been with us the whole time.  Rainer Maria Rilke said to “have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.  The point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Mary and Joseph are close to Bethlehem.  The roads are getting busier and the dust is making it harder to see.  It’s like traveling in darkness.  They are tired.  It would be nice to have a soft bed.  And they do not know what is up ahead.  They do not know what the future holds.  Let it be according to your Word!

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.

(Edmund H. Sears, 1849)
         On this day before Christmas Eve, give yourself the gift of mystery.  Let go of your preconceptions (and even your regrets!) about what Christmas holds and what you’ve planned Christmas to be and hear the angels sing!