Swirling Holy Mystery

One of my favorite Old Testament calling stories is found in the sixth chapter of Isaiah.  It is about a man who sees a vision.  It is about a man who becomes overwhelmed and immersed in the vision.  It is not a vision in which he is a spectator, but a participant.  It is a vision filled with a holy mystery that flows over into the ordinary and one in which the ordinary becomes a part of the vision.  It was surely difficult for Isaiah to see the boundaries of the mystery and the ordinary.   When we truly stand midst holy mystery, it is like standing on a mountain top that is overwhelmed by swirling clouds which take away any sense of being able to see.   

Long years ago when I was young enough to think there was no danger which could not be overcome and the years would go on forever, I drove my car filled with some friends up Brasstown Bald which is Georgia's highest peak sometime after midnight.  Smart people would have turned around when the fog became so thick we had to hang out the window to see the edge of the road.  As we reached the parking lot, we left the car and started the final walk to the top only to have someone ask if it were possible a bear might be prowling around in that thick fog.  We all stopped for a brief moment, sanity took hold, and we raced back to the car as fast as we could on a trail we could not see.   

Isaiah knew he was in a place where the way forward was impossible to see.  Mystery was swirling all around him.  In the midst of such holiness, he knew he was undone for he was an unclean sinner in the midst of unclean people.  It was not a bear which came to the prophet in that never before walked land, but seraphs who came to cleanse him, blot out his sin, and open his ears to hear the calling Word of the Lord.  Whenever holy mystery is swirling around us and we cannot see our way forward, there will be a reason.  God takes us into such moments as Jesus took James, John, and Peter up the Mount of Transfiguration so that we, too, might carry holy mystery with us wherever He calls us to go.