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Posts Tagged ‘mystery’

Mystery of the Promise

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Many people like to talk about the “promises of God,” like the various covenants God made with his chosen people from rainbows (not destroying the earth by flood after the time of Noah) to multiplication (the many children and heirs of Abraham). But then, through King David and the prophets, the ultimate promise begin to take shape.

Ephesians 3:4, 6
In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, . . . This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

This singular promise is about relationship to God, the creator and sovereign head of the Earth. This promise is mystical and eternal. The revelation of this mystery has been a slow unfolding.

God began the process with a small group of people in Israel. Although the initial oracle was fairly simplistic (as in only ten commandments), the message grew into a rather unwieldy collection of laws and interpretations that bogged down the initial intent: Love God: Love Others. Eventually, through hardships, exiles, and even silence, another small group of people of Israel grew hungry for truth and looked for the promised solution: the Messiah who would reopen the door to God.

Hidden within the Messiah solution was a greater mystery: everyone would have now have access to God.

There is something about the idea of “everyone” that is not always palatable. If everyone can have it or do it, there is nothing special about it anymore. And what about the bad people, won’t they abuse it? And what about the ugly people or the smelly people or the people of different color or shape or ability?

It would be like a board of directors of a bank: they have the combination codes for the vault. They are the keepers of the depository and they can decide when to open the vault and when to close it. That is, until some guy comes along and says he’s the one who made the vault in the first place. He’s changing the code to make it easier to open. Sure enough, those directors start freaking out when some real low-lifes from town start opening the vault and taking what appears to be more than their fair share. These new folks are so cavalier about the door, they don’t even bother to close it sometimes. The leave the door ajar. Good grief, anyone could get in there and take everything. The directors keep closing the door and changing the access codes. But then, along comes one of the old directors, some called him Paul and some called him Saul, he starts passing out the universal code, even to people from out of town. The most amazing thing happened, instead of a run on the bank, a lot of people didn’t believe the door could be opened, so they didn’t bother to look.

The mystery is that the vault is never empty. There is always enough in the vault.

It’s the law of plenty.

Most of us think, including me, “if I give it all away, there won’t be enough for me.” [I Kings 17:7-15]

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Deep Things of God

Posted in Time Up to Pentecost, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

How do we know? Isn’t it highly presumptuous to imagine I can actually know the deeper things of God? The answer: I can’t know, except in one regard, the mystery of a Redeemer given for humankind . . . given for me.

I Corinthians 2:10
” . . . but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”

So many mysteries in our world: some live while others die; some are weak while others are strong; some are rich while others are poor; and some are sensitized to the Spirit while others are not.

Why did it all make sense to me back in 1979? Why did words/ideas from the Bible suddenly jump out to me that day and speak to my inner being? I stepped over the line from unbelief to belief. At first it made no sense and the next day it did. My inner eye was opened. My mind was reset. My spirit found connection.

That place is the first step toward the deep things of God. That was my first mystery revealed. I couldn’t answer any of those other questions for anyone else. I only knew that moment was real for me. I encountered a real God: a real Spirit.

Where is reality? For my work, I just read a book that received the 2009 Printz Award for distinction in young adult literature called Going Bovine by Libba Bray. It’s not a particularly easy book to read nor is it particularly spiritual. But there is a current of thought through it about the world within. The boy is quite ill with Creuzfeld Jakob’s disease (Mad Cow disease) and is confined to a hospital bed and mostly unconscious. During that time, he lives through a great adventure, a quest. Was it real?

And so it is with the deep things of God. These things are also real and beyond our three dimensional understanding of time and space. We must let go to know. We must let go to live that bigger life within.

That which is redeemed is within.

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Revelation of the Mystery

Posted in Time Up to Pentecost, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 8, 2010| 1 Comment »

Do people actually prefer a mystery to the unveiling of that mystery? I think so. As long as something is a mystery, an unknown, then our imaginations can fill in all the blanks. We can make it up. But once the mystery is revealed . . . well, we’re stuck with the truth of it.

Romans 16:25
Now to Him Who is able to strengthen you in the faith which is in accordance with my Gospel and the preaching of (concerning) Jesus Christ (the Messiah), according to the revelation (the unveiling) of the mystery of the plan of redemption which was kept in silence and secret for long ages, . . . [ Amplified]

A good friend of mine was adopted in the old days when records were sealed and adoptions were something to hide. He found his original birth certificate by accident as a young teenager (not a good way to discover one’s birthright). No one would answer his questions about the circumstances of his birth and so his imagination ran wild. He said he would look at people all the time to determine if they might be related. He imagined his birth parents as rich and sophisticated. He imagined they traveled the world. He imagined they wanted to know about their long-lost son.

When adoption records started opening up in the 80’s and 90’s and registries were created for adoptees to look for their birth parents, my friend began his search. This was the great mystery of his life and he wanted answers.

In the end, he did find his birth mother and although the physical similarities between her, his half-siblings, and himself were striking, the rest of the story was heart breaking. His mother was not rich or sophisticated. In fact, she and her many children were living on the edge, living from welfare check to welfare check, from one catastrophe to another. They were a family in crisis all the time. His birth father had been a one-night stand and long gone. He would never be found.

My friend went through several years of a new kind of struggle: embracing the truth.

Jesus was the revelation of the mystery that was laid down in the prophetic writings. He didn’t match the picture that many had created in their minds of the long-awaited Messiah. When he claimed his own birthright, it was simply too hard for many to grasp or accept. It’s no different today.

In the end, it takes more energy to perpetuate a mystery and a secret than it does to walk the truth. This I believe.

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If there’s a kingdom…

Posted in Christmas Through Epiphany, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If there’s a kingdom, then there’s a king. And the verso must also be true: if there is a king, there is a kingdom. Even if the king is in exile, there is a place, whether we accept it or not.

Acts 28:23b
…From morning till evening he [Paul] explained and declared to them [the Roman Jews] the kingdom of God and tried to convince them about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets.

I guess this is the thing that captured my thoughts today. It doesn’t matter if people believe or don’t believe. The kingdom still exists. The kingdom endures.

There is an old “zen” question about a tree that falls in the woods; does it make a sound if no one hears it? Yes it does. It’s prideful to think that we are the only ones to hear, to acknowledge what is. We are limited in our understanding of the universe. We are limited in what we hear and see. We are limited in our own ability to engage the kingdom of God.

But, Jesus invited us to hear, see, taste and touch the kingdom. Jesus gave us entree.

There was no pushing or shoving or demanding. Jesus did not cajole. Jesus offered himself as a door and choice.

It’s a mystery.

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Mystery

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , on February 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The story of Daniel has many mysteries, but one of the most well known is the revelations that God gave him about the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2). I have not had any mysterious dreams, but I do wonder today why things work the way they do. The juxtaposition of events is always a bit peculiar. This past weekend, my children all went on a Chrysalis weekend, a mountain top if not life-changing one for all of them. And then, they all got sick (virus heaven on the weekend I suppose) and then, I too, became ill, but with a more mysterious ailment than just a cold.

I am currently in a lot of discomfort along with some pain below my sternum and so far, in a week of tests and doctor appointments, no one knows the source or cause of my problem. It’s a mystery. In my heart I believe that God is in this, but I don’t know yet, in what way. In verse 2:18, Daniel says to his friends, plead for mercy from God concerning this mystery… he was asking for revelation, a supernatural understanding of what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was and what it meant. Note… they needed to discover what it was before it’s meaning could be discerned.

There are actually many mysteries in our lives like this… and I think we don’t spend enough time asking God for the mercy of revelation. We are too busy using our own knowledge or the knowledge of others to reveal truth, when we should be asking God for it.

We don’t spend enough time identifying what is actually happening. We don’t look deeply enough into the nature of the events. We assume too much. We interpret before we know. We interpret the symptoms… the outward expressions of what is.

Today, I ask… I plead oh God, for an understanding of what is…

I remember my salvation story a true expression of this idea… when I came to the Lord, it was because a classmate challenged me to read the New Testament the same way we were being instructed in acting school to read scripts. For the first read-through, we were told to put the phrase, “If this were true…” and only after taking all the words at face value … to get the full intent of what they words actually say … could we begin to interpret. It was this reading of the Word that brought me to my knees before God, alone, on Christmas Eve, 1979.

There is a core truth to every event.

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