I love mysteries. I truly can’t seem to get enough of them. My friend Lorraine and I both seem to devour most of what the BBC network has in mystery entertainment. She more than I, and I can’t get enough mystery novels, the more clever the better. Give me a mystery, anything from Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and I am hooked. There is a need to figure out the solution. If I’m lucky before the screen writer or novelist reveals the truth.
The love of mystery has made some profound differences in my character. I am more observant than most people and I really can’t understand how people can miss some of the things that I see what right in front of me. This, of course, leads to problems too. Once I starting noticing things I can’t help starting to ask why. For some people this is annoying, but for me it is essential. I need to know the answer or to solve the problem. There is one mystery that I may ask all the questions I want to ask and read every book that has ever been written on the subject but I will never be able to solve it. That mystery is Christmas.
Christmas a mystery? Yes! And more than a mystery, a completely unsolvable one. But Christmas is a big party we put up lights, we decorate trees we eat special food and we get together with family and friends, it’s no mystery. Yes, Christmas is those things, but it is also so much more.
The mystery of Christmas lies in everything it really stands for, the birth of Jesus Christ. In the birth of Christ there are many many questions that will go unanswered until Jesus himself comes back or the Second Advent. These questions include. Exactly how did God reveal the birthplace and so much more to the prophets of old. So much of what would happen to Jesus was written 100s of years before he was born, including the exact details of his death on a cross. The idea of that kind of punishment wasn’t even around when David wrote psalm 22. The children that would be slaughtered and the visit of the Magi were all for told before He was born. There were even prophecies in China about a Saint that would come from the west. We know that Mary conceived her child through the power of the Holy Spirit, but we don’t know how that happened. We know Jesus was born in a barn and was raised as a Carpenter’s son, but even that is a mystery. And ultimately how did God become man?
We are all made in the image of God. And as we share God’s character we have the ability and desire to create. But if we took the time to build a village for example, and we saw that something was going to come and destroy it, we do not have the ability to become the village to save it. And that is what God did, he became what he created and in so doing saved us. It was the only way, we can grasp that a bit but we will never know the deep mystery and the deep power that is God.
