Author: David Ellis

Don: Mystery is to knowledge what blindness is to sight. The tension between the need to know about God and the need to live with the mystery of God lies at the interface in many of the conflicts we find in our churches today. For thousands of years, religion has been about knowing and explaining…

Jay: Is mystery important to our spirituality? Here are some passages that suggest it is, at least, important to the psyche: 1. An artist called John Newling went to insurers Lloyd’s of London in 2006 and asked them to underwrite him against ‘loss of mystery’ — in other words, to offer to pay out if…

Don: Data, information, and knowledge are about things known. Mystery is about things unknown. On the face of it, it seems preposterous to think that all mankind, born everywhere, in all ages, from all cultures, from all walks of life, all educational backgrounds, and life experiences should see God—and, even more preposterously, believe in God—in…

Now the king of Aram was warring against Israel; and he counseled with his servants saying, “In such and such a place shall be my camp.” The man of God [Elisha, the prophet] sent word to the king of Israel saying, “Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Arameans are coming down…

Don: The story of the man blind from birth reveals the entire spectrum of Man’s spiritual blindness. Some, like the blind man himself before his encounter with Jesus, have zero spiritual context. Some, like the neighbors, have some limited spiritual insight but are so confused that more information only confuses them more. Some, like the…

Don: The participants in the story of the man blind from birth provide insights into the human condition. They portray the spectrum of Man’s experience before God. Some of us are like the blind man himself, with no spiritual context whatsoever, isolated from an experience, a relationship, a framework with God; yet, in an instant,…

Don: Unlike most of the diseases mentioned in the Bible, blindness is not life-threatening, not communicable, and does not condemn the sufferer to be shackled (as was the case with some of the mentally ill) or physically isolated from the community (as was the case with lepers). Blindness is a danger to no-one but the…

Don: There seems to be a need for some sort of spiritual blindness for Man to appear before God. Adam and Eve had it in the Garden, until they lost that blindness in the Fall. They used their newfound ability to discern Good and Evil in order to pass judgment. Then the eyes of both…

Jay: Talking about darkness and light, as we did last week, leads us to consider what we can see and what we can’t see. It leads us to think about discernment, visual and intellectual. Darkness and our inability to discern things in it leaves us feeling vulnerable; light gives us confidence by giving us the…