Christmas: Message of Mystery

Raising three girls is the hardest thing I've ever done ... am doing ... will ever do!  Emotions, estrogen, mood swings, boys, hair, role in the world, independence, dependence, modesty and boldness ... how to balance life lessons that will give them good foundations to be women of integrity ... hard stuff!

During this season of mixed materialistic messages lined with biblical scenes of a virgin on a donkey next to an overweight senior adult clad in red velvet, I want my girls to hear one message:  mystery.  Not only this time, this message of Christmas, but all of life with God is filled with mystery!

I've spent a lot of my adult life, in vain, trying to explain why Creator God, untouchable and unseen by humans, might have allowed an event, crisis, catastrophe to occur.  Alas, who am I to read the mind of the invisible, wise God?

Lessons I've learned from Mary, this virgin chosen to birth Jesus, is to accept the mystery.  Her response to rather unbelievable news was:  I am your slave.  I like to be a slave ... to food, to clothes, to things that bring me pleasure.  But, I run from that which will enslave me to pain.  She didn't.  She understood, somehow, this great mystery of the unexplainable. 

I don't understand most of what happens to me.  I balance it against a life philosophy that has found and daily experiences truth from a loving God.  However, there are things that often just don't make sense.  I can wrestle and fight against the injustice, the not knowing, the quest to find meaning ... or I can surrender to the mystery of it.  Surrender is not weakness.  Surrender is the strength of knowing to whom I am surrendering. 

I surrender to this baby born of a brave Mary, lived a somewhat scandalous life among tradition, and came to surrender his own life for a greater cause ... my good ... and the good of the whole world.  That, my friend, is mystery at it's finest.

Unwrap gifts, eat fudge, light candles, attend services ... and ask for Creator God to whisper mystery in the middle of this season ... and ask for the boldness to surrender. 

Looking for mystery with a Nancy Drew fervor,
christina