Mystery

Most of my life I think I've believed that God is a god of mystery, but not a good kind of mystery. This is the kind of mystery that makes you pissed off, that makes you want to forget what you stand for and go with whatever makes sense. I came to this conclusion because the good kind, the kind that gives life even without understanding, was so out of my reach and only in my imagination that I assumed God wasn't like that.

The meaningless sufferings that we endure dig through our soft, fluffy faith and interrogate our feeble minds, demanding that we answer the question of why. And, like with Job, God does not really answer, so neither can we.

So, when I hear that mystery is a good thing, and that this good kind of mystery can be adopted, I automatically scream "FALSE!" in my mind....Outwardly I tend to be a little more composed, and even will agree that this is true. But inside there is a battle going on between what I know and what I experience....the truth that God is mysteriously good and the experience that God is mysteriously apathetic.

Now, having read through Buechner's description of the Gospel as a tragedy and a comedy, I am beginning to see that it is precisely the experienced grief and pain that points towards the goodness of God's mystery. For there is irony in the Gospel, when in our inevitable destruction we complain to God that life has to turn out this way....and then life doesn't line up straight and we suddenly find ourselves in a mysterious world....a world that doesn't make sense, but we could care less because the ultimate mystery is grace, and that is the most precious thing in the whole of reality.

I still don't fully have a grip on the goodness of God's mystery, but I think that I am beginning to see a little of just how powerful this absurd, mysterious, beautiful life really is.