μυστηριον

Let no one say life is without mystery. I found this note lying on the ground in my driveway this afternoon.

Dear uncle yuannah
I was worred that you wouldn't come home
We miss you very much. I was wondering when
were you coming home because I still
want to play fight like we used to
do when I

This note seems to demand an explanation. Who is the author? What is the actual nature of the relationship between the author and the uncle? Why did the uncle leave? To where did the uncle go? How did this note end up in my driveway?

(I gave up posting pictures to my blog for lent. However, if you follow those links you can see the actual note. I guess that's sort of cheating, but it's the small inconvenience of it all that is supposed to remind of us how greatly Jesus was inconvenienced for our sake.)

Now this is less inscrutable but more unknowable, and moreover, shockingly tragic. My very first few months of teaching I worked with a troubled young lady. This young woman was not doing well in school, clashing with her parents at home, and acting out in self-destructive ways. Of course, as a naïve young college graduate, I assumed that these are the kind of things that always work themselves out. What adolescent—or person, for that matter—doesn't struggle in similar ways?

However, the last time I ever spoke with her, she was working at a cell-phone kiosk at the mall. She told me that she was almost done with her GED and that she was living on her own. This seemed to be encouraging news to me. However, not long after that, her subsequent murder by strangulation made the front page of the local paper. Apparently, however, the true identity of the killer remains elusive, in a case with multiple suspects which, if it were in a murder novel or primetime crime drama, would demand a deus ex machina in order to be resolved.

See what the local news had to say. Click on the video icon to watch the story.