I am the God who Brought You- Into the Thick Darkness

Frankly, I am not a dark person. There's a reason most movie monsters come out in the dark, and why haunted houses are always dark, and why we spent so much time on creating lights. Dark is not fun. And then we come to the end of the 10 Words (or commandments) story in Exodus, and God shows up in the middle of thick darkness, and even invites Moses into it. Personally, I would ask for a little "let there be light" so that I could see in the thick darkness. Or maybe I would quote 1 John 1:5 and say that in God there is no darkness at all. On my worst days, I might want to even go and get a flashlight. Either way, at the end of my excuses, Bible quoting and fear, I am still on the outside and not where God is. To be frank, I think we have the whole "God thing" way too figured out. Following God is so tame and nice that it involves no risk and mystery. The only mystery are the Bible verses that make us panic before we silently decide never to read them again- I'm looking at you, Lamentations. There we go, mystery solved. We can move on. I feel somewhat empty by this understanding of following God. It's boring. After all, we never tell stories of boring things. You will never hear me tell a story of the time I drank that glass of water and it tasted just like water. You'd be bored by that story. But when following God, we seem perfectly content to be bored and boring. Instead, I wonder what would happen if we followed the God who invited us into mystery, into being called beyond what our spiritual gifts inventory would tell us to do, beyond the social groups we are "planted" in and into the lives of the marginalized around us. What is the mystery you might be called into today?