The War of the Mysteries

There is such a thing as disaster. The structure of things collapses, suddenly and without warning. The market crashes and your forty years’ security is erased. A dark spot appears on a routine x-ray. The child is miscarried. The father is killed by a roadside bomb, far away. There is such a thing as disaster, and grief that will not be comforted.

These things do not happen because we have sinned, or because our faith was too weak to save us. They simply come, out of the dark, and they take, and they return to the dark, and we don’t know why, except for an abiding sense that the world is not the place it was intended to be. We were not born to live in uncertainty. We were not born to die. But we live in the dark, and we die without knowing why.

But in that same darkness, there is God. There is a Someone, just as vast and just as unknowable, who comes out of the dark to bind up our hurts and to comfort the mourner. There is a voice that sings our keening souls to rest. There is a mystery that walks between us and the void.

By faith, we take the hand of that Mystery, though we cannot see his face. By faith, we learn his name. By faith, we are led by that unknowable Goodness through the valley of the unknowable horror. By faith, we trust that when our bodies fail us at last and we fall into the last darkness, He will find us there, and all that’s wrong will be made right again.

Respond in Prayer

Father God, By your redeeming grace, death has lost its power over us. Because of you, we do not need to fear death and disaster. Please help me to live like this today, to fear nothing but you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Michael Bonikowsky