mystery is awake

my head is full of things that don't make sense. like the moment i happened to glance out the window at church in time to see a woman drive through the parking lot about to break down in tears. i want to know why she was crying. and why i finally saw a guy i went to school with, whom i've been thinking about for a while, only to try to avoid being seen by him.

i wonder why i've been made to love the mysterious. i know that i do because i love fog and a certain level of uncertainty - i love believing that magical things could exist and the way that translucent material veils reality. i think that god made me this way because He is a mystery and in a way most of everything we know is mysterious. if this is a gift, then my heart is searching and longing to know god and bring to life the ways that he reaches into our reality from his mystery.

i had a conversation with someone the other day that got me wondering about how often i embrace reality in my life. it's easy to go through the motions of living i guess, but harder to live in the face of reality. it hurts more to live with the reality that some people that i love don't know god. it hurts more to live knowing that i have no control, that even extravagant love is unnoticed or maybe unwanted. that i do so very little when it comes to bringing healing or hope, or that i much prefer to blend in rather than to shout my love for god from the mountains, or even speak it quietly to a stranger for that matter.

sometimes when i'm sitting in church, my mind wanders towards the reality that the words being spoken are about this life. that in this life, jesus was here; in this life the holy spirit lives in me to display god's glory; in this life i will choose to risk and be alive and in this life i will know what it's like to step into mystery. it's not a story that i can read while it happens to someone else as i go through the motions of living. maybe believing is so scary because we have to be awake, to accept something of reality that is easier to ignore. and then god is the one who asks us to do the most with our awakening.