Embracing the mystery

It's become something of a catch phrase, hasn't it?

"Embrace the Mystery ... "

I made a comment on a friend's blog a few days ago, about what it is like being a post-modern, emergent and often confused Christian these day and how part of our growth as followers of Jesus includes "an increasing ability to tolerate uncertainty, to live with mystery - embrace it, in fact."

Today, as I drove across the beautiful mountains that separate our small, rural community from the big city of Cape Town, I found myself talking to God, as I often do when driving. And I wondered what on earth He sees in us miserable, mixed-up, weak, messy humans that makes Him want to love us? I mean, here's a Being who created universes and atoms and angels and thought and light and sunrises - with all His power and creative ability, why did He bother with us?

I don't get it, God.

But as I considered the unfathomable nature of the Almighty, I realized anew that I am never, ever going to get my logical mind around concepts like eternity. Or infinity. Or omniscience and omnipresence. None of those things, ever! They are beyond my ability to understand in the same way that concepts like 'how is soil was formed, where does rain come from and what do dark and light mean?" are beyond the understanding of an earthworm who otherwise tunnels happily through lovely, loamy, moist soil. That worm will never know what it feels like to fall in love or why human males have a need to engage in battles!

But right now, that worm doesn't need to know. All it needs to do is to embrace the mystery of the magnificent world it lives in, and trust that the Creator will take care of it. But I'm not going to take the analogy any further- we are not defenseless worms, nor is a careless gardener with a sharp spade the equivalent of our Heavenly Father!

But thinking this way made me realize again that "not knowing" the answers to the questions about God gives me, oddly enough, an enormous amount of HOPE. Hope that there IS a God who is far greater than me, who has His finger on the pulse of the world, and even better than that, knows the end from the beginnning. (Or however it is He constructed that whole eternity thing ... )

Having grown up as a evangelical protestant with black-and-white religious rules, I find it a wee bit scary these days to be embracing the mystery, not only of the BIG questions, but also to be considering issues like - maybe it's not a sin to be gay? Maybe the Bible isn't the 'inerrant' Word of God? Maybe the Church isn't all it's cracked up to be?

I don't have many of the answers yet. It's all part of the mystery. As a follower of Jesus, all I can do is embrace the unfathomable mystery of His astonishing love for me.

Elleann.

Unravelling life ... one word at a time.