Mystery is Afoot

Advent announces that mystery is afoot.  Not just any kind of mystery, but real mystery.  Holy Mystery is out there somewhere in a darkness that is only waiting for a moment when the Light will come to break it into a thousand unrecognizable pieces.  This Mystery first penetrated the earth in a place filled with the smell of hay and animal manure, a  normal place transformed by painful agony and then unexplicable joy, and a place where the mundane and holy became as one.  It was a much anticipated moment for the two who carried the longed for and invisible one with them.     

Mystery is still afoot.  So often we live with blinders to what is unfolding around us.  We seem only able to see what speaks of enabling us to make it to the next day, the next year, the next season of our life.  Still Mystery is pressed in around us and within us.  What we long for cannot be seen, but once it is seen, we know the reality of who we are and Who is it that has come and is still to come.   

It is Advent, is it not?  Sing the words loudly, "Come, Thou long expected Jesus."    Hear the Word calling us to watch and wait.   And as we dare to worship on a day so filled with what cannot be understood, we find ourselves standing on the threshold where glimpses of the Coming One Who has come to live with us, to save us, and to take us home are seen dimly and then clearly.  Ah, it is indeed a moment when holy Mystery is afoot all around us.