In our gospel lesson today, we hear Nicodemus ask Jesus, “How can these things be?” That is often our state of mind when we try to comprehend the ways of God. That shouldn’t be surprising because we know from scripture that the prophet Isaiah tells us that God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”(Is.55:8-9) What we hear and see and experience of the Divine doesn’t seem to make sense to us; it just raises questions in our minds. So long as we try to relate to God through our heads alone, limiting God by our human understanding, we likely will continue to wonder “How can these things be?”.

Coming to know God is a heart function; that is where we find the Holy One dwelling deep within, waiting for us to awaken to the Divine Presence “in whom we live and move and have our being.”(Acts 17:28) Within and without, how can that be? It is the mystery of Love; the Holy One is motivated in all things by Love, self-giving love.

Someone (you may remember who) has said, “Our life is God’s gift to us, and what we do with it is our gift to God.” The Holy One longs for us to accept the mystery of Divine Love and to live into it with generous, compassionate self-giving to those in the world around us. As we come to recognize God’s transforming grace at work in our lives, we begin to know “How can these things be?”.