The Password Is...

Anyone out there remember the original game show called Password?  Alan Ludden was the host and he would almost whisper the words The password is as the TV screen revealed the hidden word for the television audience.

For me, the password these past few weeks has been:  mystery

Mystery not like the Nancy Drew books that I grew up reading.  In fact, I still have my collection of hard-covered, girl-sleuth books.  Oh yes, I enjoy a good mystery book.

Lately the word mystery seems to surround me.  Like I am living the word.  It is a mystery to me how I am able to work fulltime and do my homework for a college course and go visit my grandbaby every once in awhile and have coffee with friends and freeze apples from the abundance of our crop and give time to my husband and try to make a Christmas shopping list and pray for my Dad & Mom during Dad's chemo and...you know...the list goes on. 

It is a mystery that anything actually gets done <consider a smiley face inserted here>.

Living a life of mystery is bigger than the list of tasks that I did or did not get done.  Recently I listened to an online sermon from a pastor in My City.  He related a story of a woman that visited a Sunday morning service.  The pastor greeted her as she was leaving the sanctuary and she informed him she was in town for medical treatment.  She had been told she had over 20 cancerous tumors in her body.  With determination and faith, she told the pastor she knew she had been healed and that the week of tests in front of her would prove her healing.  The pastor admitted at this point in his message that he knew God could heal the woman but he doubted she would be healed.   At the end of that week, the woman called the pastor to report she had been found to be tumor and cancer free!  The pastor was amazed, humbled, and without explanation.  See, a woman in his congregation, the mother of several young children, had gone through exactly the same diagnosis within the past year.  This young mom did not get the healing and died. 

Was God mad and punishing the woman that wasn't healed?  No, because that would be contrary to His character and promises.

Did the unhealed woman have sin in her life and this was her punishment?  If that was the criteria, no one would be healed, right?   Our manual as Believers In Jesus Christ, the Bible, records several instances where people were healed.  In many of those documented experiences, the sins of the person were forgiven along with the healing.  So forgiveness isn't a criterion for healing.

God must have loved one woman more than the other and that is why just the one was healed.  WRONG!  God loves us all.  Period.  No conditions.  He loves us whether we love Him.  How could He choose who to heal?

That sermon is a true mystery.  As frustrating as it is to understand, I actually love it.  It leads me to believe that I only know and see a small fraction of who My Big God really is.  See I believe that He is in control.  He hasn't lost the battle between good and evil.  He has a plan.  He loves, loves, loves all people.  And I cannot begin to explain everything about Him.  He is a mystery.

He is a mystery.  I had to say it again. 

I did a Bible search on the word mystery.  Depending upon the translation of the Bible there are between 25 and 30 verses that have the word mystery in them.  Here is one of them:

Just as you’ll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman, So you’ll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does.  Ecclesiastes 11:5

 Yup.  That pretty much sums it up.  What is really interesting to me is that in the past few weeks I've probably heard a dozen people say the word mystery or talk about how mysterious and unexplainable God is.  He is really trying to get my attention with that word.  So I'll end this little post praying as I have the past few weeks:

God, my brain cannot fathom all of the concepts of who You are.  You are the Creator, the I AM, my Lord and Savior, Healer, Comforter, Joy Unspeakable, Peace Beyond my Understanding, Lover of My Soul, and so on.  I have experienced You in all of these ways yet I don't understand the how's and why's.  Yet I trust You and know that all of Your mysteries are maybe not things that I will ever understand.  Your timing is a mystery.  In all my life, lead me, guide me, and know that I love You with my whole heart.  In the Name of the All Powerful Jesus, Amen.

Whispering I leave you with this:  the password is....mystery.  As in living life with an incredibly Mysterious God.  He keeps me So Amazed!