Let the Mystery Be...

I love reading the Old Testament... no shilly shally... straight talk between God and Creation... between humans and God. In all of Old Testament life, there is the sense of God’s immediate presence. God is in a rainbow... a burning bush... a rock that gives birth to water... in fleeces made wet and dry. God’s pleasure or anger or grief can be found in the daily lives of our faith family ancestors stories. They talk to God... sometimes talk back to God... whine and complain to God... sing praise to God... give thanks to God... plead and beg from God... and God responds. There is an active listening (I have a husband with a Ph.D. in Pastoral care so I know what these words mean) and active speaking between God and the people... no sense of distance or fuzzy images in the dialogue with the God of the Old Testament.
I wish I could have such a connection with the world around me. I wish I could hear God’s voice in the sound of a donkey’s bray or in the stillness of the woods on the farm. I wish I could see God on top of a mountain or in a thunderstorm. I wish I had the same sense of God in my world that King David and Abigail and Eve and Adam and Abraham and Sarah and Joseph and Rahab did.
Our modern world has so many mysteries explained by science and logic that we have left very little room for the unexplainable. Our need to understand... to control... to make it better... to replicate creation... has pushed the Holy out of our daily living. It is hard to hear the Voice when we are listening to T.V. and iPods and traffic and computers and DVD’s and MTV and news reports of far distant lands and wars and rumors of wars and pestilence and starvation. The Holy goes underground for protection from our obsession with the need to know... to communicate... to change the world.
It is a comfort to know that we can still find the Mystery living with us. All we need are ears to hear ...eyes to see... and time to be still. When I am still, I can hear the voice of the mourning dove crying softly in the early morning light. And I can remember Jesus’ reminding us of God’s care for the birds. How do they live... where do they nest... how do they sing... where do they go when they migrate... how are their feathers so beautiful in life... questions my four year old grandson asks, lead me to the Mystery of Creation in the birds. Matthew isn’t asking for facts or explanations alone. He is recognizing the wonder, the joy, the mystery of birds... giving thanks for their creation and loving them.
Living on a farm helps you understand farmers’ preoccupation with the weather. Sometimes what the weather will do determines if you harvest good hay or hay that has had all the nutrition washed out of it by rain as it lay on the ground to dry. In spite of our modern weather prediction systems, our confident assumptions about our ability to know what is going to happen and when, the weather continues to confound us. Our guesses are more educated but they are still guesses... not the absolute final word about the coming of snow or rain or sunshine.
So I wake up in the morning, look out the window and guess... do those clouds mean snow... what a beautiful color they are with the reflected sunlight... maybe we will have some sunshine today... look at the wind blowing through the willow tree and shaking all the drooping branches... the ground is frozen so if it snows, it will stick... wouldn’t it be lovely to have enough snow to go sledding...the arrival of snow is still a mystery for us.
The Mysterious One is all around me and in me. For Lent, I will stop looking for answers and look for questions... stop expecting to know and let myself be known... stop paying attention to the noise of the world and listen for the silence...stop worrying with what I cannot explain or predict or control and start looking and listening and giving thanks for God around me and in me and still in my world. Like the Old Testament people, I will find the Holy One everywhere I go...I am not in charge, the Mystery is...