Only those who are willing to  rest in the mystery of  the spiritual realm, without trying to explain it away, can catch a glimpse of God. Absolute certainty keeps us from learning the true nature of our world.   Science has brought vast improvements into our lives, yet it cannot tell us why it is, that when we look up to the heavens, we are awed into silence.  For something in us knows we are connected to the cosmos, in ways beyond our imagining.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. . . We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

Coming to Christmas and the birth of Christ requires us to open our hearts . . . to accept the mystery of God. It is to be open to God’s love, care and compassion for all of the creation, including ourselves . . . open to the mystery of a God, who would choose to walk among us, to live our life and experience our reality.

“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,” Matthew 1:23

“Only the humble believe and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that God does wonders where people despair, that God takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

Daily Devotions and other Christmas resources can be found at this Link – Devotions for Advent to Epiphany