Two thousand years ago God spoke
through a manger, and we still experience the mystery! The Christmas story is
filled with it. Mystery is not in what we see and do not understand. Mystery is
in what we know deeply and cannot see.
I recall a crisp, silent night
during Christmastide when my children were teenagers, and we cross-country
skied in the moonlight. The sky switched on its tiny lights above us, and the
moonglow lit the way. Spruce limbs drooped with icy fingers and cast crooked
shadows all around us. The swoosh-swoosh of our skis startled the silence. A
stream trickled beneath the ice, heeding the call of the sea. The soil hid
beneath the snow, and seeds slept deep below, trusting the green of spring.
Leafless aspen gazed at us from the other side of the pond, singing softly with
the spruce in antiphonal chorus "Il Est Ne'": "He is born, the
holy Child." We stopped, glancing back at the twin scars trailing behind
us marking clearly where we'd been. But where we would go lay open before us,
unmarred. We grew quiet, sensing anew that the stillness of the universe is a
dance of barefoot grace with the Creator, a silence alive with cosmic joy and
mystery.
Emmanuel!
God is with us!
-- Marilyn Brown Oden in Manger and Mystery: An
Advent Adventure (Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room Books, 1999)
#3784
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