Holy Mystery 

Introduction 

When I wrote “Holy Mystery,” I had a few specific goals in mind. For one, I am not a fan of the genre of “Christmas music,” although, if my wife had her way, we would be playing it year round. I definitely don’t like the commercialization of a holiday meant to celebrate the advent of our Lord, turning it into a shining city on the hill of self-indulgence and greed. I can appreciate the rich theology of the old hymns; “Oh, Holy Night” probably being my favorite for both its lyrics and the musical gut punch of the “Fall on your knees/Christ is the Lord” sections. For our song, I wanted to try to thematically pull from some of those same weighty concepts brought forth in the hymns, marrying those thoughts with our weird, loud, noisy genre of music that we play. Specifically, I felt that so many of the words have been sung so many times that they have lost much of the impact of what they truly mean. When we talk about the birth of Christ, we can say it with such nonchalance that the average listener would have no idea that we were speaking of the literal entrance of God the Son into the world that He created. We’ve become so comfortable with the sweet nativity scenes decorating our yards that we have largely forgotten how profound, how scandalous, how preposterous, how mysterious all of this actually is. (I use the word “preposterous” not in a critical or diminishing way, but in the way that our Lord uses foolish things to confound the wise. - 1 Cor. 1:27) It’s an absurd thought that the Almighty would condescend to the level of being born as a baby, completely dependent on his mother, needing to be fed and clothed and cleaned and changed. These types of befuddling juxtapositions are what I sought to capture in the message of this song. In that same vein, I will be sharing a daily advent devotional, each day focusing on one of these crucially counter-intuitive yet fully intentional aspects of our sovereign God and the first coming of Christ into the world. My hope is that you would be challenged, encouraged, strengthened and drawn closer towards Jesus, the Christ. We, as people, don’t typically do so well with tension and yet it is so often that we find it is in the tension that God reveals Himself to us throughout scripture. Join me over these next few weeks as we dive into the holy mystery that is the advent of our Lord. 

-Jerrod Cunningham 

12/1/2022