a divine mystery.

For as long as I can remember I have loved anything with a mystery. I was obsessed with Encyclopedia Brown. I've read nearly every book in the Box Car Children, Sammy Keyes, Hank the Cow Dog, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Nancy Drew (the picture is one of my bookshelves... and that doesn't include the ones I rented from the library) series. I played Clue Finders, Nancy Drew and (I'll begrudgingly admit) Barbie Sleuth games on the computer.

The first time I picked up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I was in the 5th grade. I remember sitting and reading it while visiting friends of my parents' and being thoroughly frustrated that the only dictionary in the house couldn't tell me what "pips" were. (For those who are curious, I found out later that night that they're seeds— in the case in question, orange seeds... but read the story!) I got through about half the book before deciding that Conan Doyle's 19th century prose really was too dense for my 12-year-old brain, so I set it aside until high school when I read/reread the whole series.

Then of course there is my love for the old black-and-white Sherlock Holmes TV and movie series... As wonderful as Robert Downey Jr. may be, he will never be able to hold a candle to Basil Rathbone and his dreamy accent. Same goes for Ron Howard.

I know, I'm a nerd.

So why on earth is all this relevant?

Well, I just finished reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis—a wonderful book on so many levels—and out of all the things I could write about regarding that book, I figured I would start by sharing a passage that I feel is one of the most powerful of the whole book. And it just so happens to do with mysteries...

For those who aren't familiar with the book, it's set up as a series of letters from one demon (Screwtape) to his nephew (Wormwood... I know, but this was waaaaay before Harry Potter.) Here, Screwtape finds it impossible to believe that the "Enemy", or Christ, could really love humanity. This passage is from chapter 19 (the bold is my own added emphasis):

The truth is I slipped by mere carelessness into saying that the Enemy really loves the humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being, they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else—He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to out that real motive. What does He stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question….

Since then, we have begun to see why our Oppressor was so secretive. His throne depends on the secret. Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn't make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still we can't find out. Yet we must never lose hope; more and more complicated theories, fuller and fuller collections of data, richer rewards for researchers who make progress, more and more terrible punishments for those who fail—all this, pursued and accelerated to the very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to succeed.

I think I forget how amazing it really is that the God of the universe cares at all about me. There is something beautifully nonsensical about the gospel that defies understanding. A divine mystery.

For all my Encyclopedia-Brown training, I can't even begin to grasp it. Fortunately, though, there is a better option than Screwtape's methodology of hypotheses and research (God knows, I got more than my fill of that in AP Bio. No thank you.)

Paul says in Ephesians 3:

"In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. ⁶This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

...¹⁰His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, ¹¹according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. ¹²In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I want that to be my prayer. That I would understand more and more each day the crazy, impossible mystery of God's love. Or in the words of Phil Wickham:

You were the first and You'll be the end
Time cannot hold You down
Why save a wretch like me?
No eye has seen, no ear has heard
No heart could fully know
All of Your mystery

I want to hear the thunder of who You are
To be captured inside the wonder of who You are
I want to live I want to breathe
To search out Your heart and all of Your mysteries

:)