life on planet earth on Mystery

“In historical time, Christmas happened over two thousand years ago in Bethlehem; in theological time, Christmas happens now, in the mystery of God choosing to dwell within humankind, a mystery that t...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God, Mysterious, Awe-Inspiring, Wonderful, One-in-Three/Three-in-One: You surprise us not with flashing lights, loud crashing noises, and constant activity. You surprise u...

Forgive us, O God, when we limit you – When we remake you in our image, When we claim our causes as your own, When we box you in, And explain you away, And in our attempts at understanding, whittle aw...

God, our Father: Your love gives us more than we can ever hope for, and far beyond what we deserve. You clothe us in the righteousness of Christ. You give us dreams and visions of what we can become b...

Lord and God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have only begun to comprehend the wonder of the Incarnation, that you in Christ would become one of us, that you in Christ would live among us and be ...

Lord God Almighty: our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer: There is no place where You are absent. There is no corner of our world that’s hidden from You. There is nothing about us You do not know, no ac...

May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplating the mysteries of his heavenly wisdom with really increasing devotion, to his glory and our edification. Amen.

Pastor: Great is the mystery of faith: All: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again! Pastor: Praise to you, Lord Jesus: All: Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored o...

Eternal God, we recognize that Your ways are mysterious. Teach us to be still and to wait for You. We confess our sinfulness, our need for control, and our discomfort with the unknown. Instead of turn...

Save us, Glorious Christ, from every false understanding and motivation Save us from the temptation to just stay on the mountain Save us from the temptation to never engage Save us from the temptation...

Our age dislikes intensely the idea of mystery because it directly exposes our limitations. The thought that there could be something, or someone, beyond human comprehension or imagining is, of course...

Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself.

The cynic won’t be fooled by your snake oil, but their posture also prevents them from being wowed by the transcendent or moved by anything beautiful. They live in a cold universe, a world without mys...

This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.

Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-ma...

I have been reading Julian Jackson’s biography of Charles de Gaulle — it’s exceptional, so far — and I find myself meditating on a story Jackson tells near the beginning of the book. In June of 1940, ...

J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...

It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil,...

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ...

Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all...

The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine ene...

Being fully human is to inhabit the wild mysteries of our bodies and trust that, because Christ was a body, and still is a body, we don’t need to fear this place. We can say, it is good, because Chris...