Do you remember when someone said to you, “I can’t tell you the secret.  If I do, it won’t be a secret anymore!”    We all (well, many of us) have tried to figure out the secret on the “I’ve Got A Secret” television show.  I suspect most of us have a hard time letting someone else “have a secret.”  An ancient story captures that same urge we humans have as it tells about a tree and an apple in a beautiful garden.   When it’s something we can’t have or can’t know, we seem to have a tough time leaving it alone!

Yet, that mysterious part of Advent seems to be so powerful and profound.  In the darkest of nights, the stars shine the brightest.  When we can’t feel God’s presence is exactly when the truth of God’s presence takes on immense dimensions.   Advent lets us sit in the mystery and compels us to be quiet.

When I served the Hammond charge, the Hammond church decided to do a live nativity.  It was quite a production, complete with a manger, sheep and a donkey.  Members of the church took shifts, standing still in costume on one of the coldest nights of that December with a stiff wind out of the south, right into our faces.  Christmas carols played in the background and right on highway 12 in front of the Hammond church there was a traffic jam!  Cars stopped and people looked and looked.  Some folks parked their cars and came and looked.  Neigh-bors just walked over and looked.

I remember one family who came with their two small children.  They looked and talked with the kids and then they went home.  About a half an hour later the dad came back.  He was standing on the sidewalk looking when someone from church said to him, “Didn’t I see you here earlier?”  “Yes,” he said, “but I just had to come back for another look.”   The mystery of it all had captured the man’s heart and he came back for another look.  He didn’t come back to figure it out, to get the answer, to learn the secret.  That’s not what brought him back.  He came to gaze upon the mystery. 

The writer of Ephesians talks about “how the mystery was made known by revelation.”  The mystery isn’t explained.  Then it wouldn’t be a mystery!  What is revealed is that God among us is the mystery of the Gospel.  And that is good news. 

What a gift to just sit and gaze upon that!

Janet Ellinger

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