You wanna run that plan by me again?

The holidays always make me think about mystery. I know that sounds odd, but it's true. I'm always struck by the mysterious, "otherness" of God around the holidays. I mean, think about it. There's something about the Son of God, coming as a baby, being born into poverty, so that he could spend his life giving himself away, only to be rejected by the very people he came to save that just doesn't seem to fit. (Especially if you hold, as I do, a high belief and trust in God's complete and total sovereignty over all things.) When you start taking into account the fact that God could have sent Christ long before, and that he chose to let generations of folks live and die before he ever sent his Son. . . well, it's just pretty awe-some.

Last night God answered a prayer that I had quit praying. Really, truly, I had given up praying for this particular thing, and yet he answered it anyway. In an amazing way. And, it just reminded me again of how utterly above and over me God is. I mean, this is something I've been praying for for months and months now. I've cried, begged, pleaded, others have prayed, and last night, for reasons known only to him, God chose to step in and answer the prayer that I quit praying a few weeks ago.

Here's the thing: as I think about this season, this time of year, it's good for me to let the oddness and illogic of it all strike me. Bethlehem, the virgin birth, shepherds, God becoming man, just letting the weirdness of it all flood over me, gives me strength to press on, because my God doesn't act and think as I and the rest of those who live around me do. What a hopeful thing is the seeming absurdity of God!