I played Cluedo as a child, a parent and a grandparent… A murder’s been committed; there are six suspects, nine rooms and six possible murder weapons. At the end of the game we discover whether it was Miss Scarlet in the dining room with the candlestick or Professor Plum in the library with the dagger… The murder mystery is solved.
Murder mysteries have been popular for years… Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Maigret, Vera, Morse… There’s an apparently insoluble case… eventually the mystery’s solved.
I’m reading about Charles Darwin’s voyages on HMS Beagle. Employed as a naturalist, in a five-year voyage around the world, he saw species he’d never seen before and found fossils of creatures that were not on the earth. He was looking for answers to biological, geological and theological questions…
The mysteries that Darwin faced and the solutions he suggested are still debated today…
Yesterday I drank coffee with my friend Keith. We were typical old men… ‘Last of the Summer Wine’… discussing questions… we didn’t have answers…
…Last weekend an estimated 50,000 people had attended and enjoyed ‘First Light’, our Lowestoft 24 hour beach festival… There were fights and arrests… Why do a few people have to spoil it for everybody else?
…We remembered good people, good times at the church we’ve both attended for many years. We discussed one or two problems… Why is there disagreement, dissatisfaction and unresolved issues in good churches?
…Keith worked with Chris, a pleasant man in his late forties. He’d heard that Chris had died unexpectedly on Saturday leaving a wife and daughter… Why do bad things happen to good people?
When I was a young man I thought I knew all the answers. Now I accept that there are ‘mysteries’… I’m not sure of the right question, let alone the right answer.
I’m content to trust my God who is much bigger than me, wiser than me, more reliable than me… I leave my misunderstood mysteries and unanswered questions with Him.
malcolmsmusings.org 