On just about all gift-giving occasions, as a child, I would receive the

latest Hardy Boys mystery thriller. My older brother (by eleven months)

would receive Tom Swift books. I never read his books. I don’t know if he

ever read mine. My avoidance of Tom Swift had nothing to do with the

fact that he was my brother’s, but that the books were science fiction. It

was obvious to me that I was mystery to his science fiction. I did not

need science fiction to fulfill my quest for the mysterious. Life here on

earth did plenty of that for me.

As I’ve grown, my recreational reading has continued to have a bias for

mysteries. So, to a degree, does my serious study. As Anonymous, that

prolific pundit of all time, has said, “Life is a mystery to be lived, not a

problem to be solved.” I don’t read mysteries for solutions; I read them for

the journey to solution, with all of its twists and turns!

Currently, it seems, many people do not tolerate ambiguity. We demand

solutions we can understand and accept as feasible. When we’ve

finished the book or the experience or even life itself, we relish the neat

and tidy ending. As the poet Robert Browning wrote: “God’s in His

heaven—All’s right with the world!”

But let’s not crave a solution; let’s crave infinitely deepening

understanding. Let’s live our faith as a mystery: A baby is born amidst

rumors of divinity. Everyone from kings to shepherds hears about the

child. Temple groupies see him as the fulfillment of all sorts of promises.

Power wants him dead. Once he is an adult, no one completely

understands most of what he says. He is murdered. Then things really

get confusing.

As we continue our mysterious journey of faith, there are at least two

things to remember: we are moving toward a solution; we will never fully

arrive there. Still, we stick with the journey relishing it as it is and in no

great hurry for it to be over. We come to love the trip for its confusions

and surprises, its advances and retreats. We don’t want it to end, and

are promised that it never will. But we do want it to continue challenging

us.

So we keep journeying, knowing it is the quest more than the

understanding that keeps our lives expanding for eternity, and thenl we

and the mystery are one.