May We Never Lose Our Wonder
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Wonder is defined as: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.
He who moves mountains and knows all the stars by name placed each hair on your head and freckle on your cheeks. Yet we forget how truly powerful our God is all the time. We find ourselves trying to solve all our own problems and failing. We are crushed by our inability to control our lives, and only when we are truly broken we call out to God. The truth is He never left, you only forgot.
How often do we lose our wonder? How often do we get caught up in the mundane daily chores of our lives? How often do we forget that we are saved and forgiven because of the sacrifice our God made? How often do we forget the wonder and awe of the God of the universe?
The answer to these questions are all to familiar. We define feeling God's wonder as that mountaintop emotion wrapped in love and peace. But this is not the wide-eyed and mystified wonder we are called to have. We are called to wake up in the morning and inhale with child-like wonder the beauty of our King. That heart-stopping wonder should be familiar, but no less amazing. We forget that we breathe because it's his breath in our lungs, that we are built on nothing less then grace, and that we are broken and in constant need of a Savior. How many times has he healed your broken heart? How many times have you collapsed and he picked you up and carried you through the storm? For that does he not deserve to be renown in constant wonder?
"Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders. And blessed be His glorious name forever; and may the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen."
-Psalm 72:18-19
Look around you. To the house the surrounding you, the people beside you, and the blessings between you. Do you see the beauty of God's creation?
Our culture is obsessed with beauty yet we know little about it. In order to see through eyes of wonder we must be aware of both wondrous beauty and ordinary beauty.
"Ordinary things are glorious simply because they exist. Elaine Scarry, a Harvard professor of aesthetics, argues that 'Beauty takes place in the particular, and if there are no particulars the chances of seeing it goes down.' Ordinary things are beautiful, first of all, because they are particular things. They simply are, and furthermore they have been given to you. The apostle Paul once wrote 'what do you have that you do not receive?' The answer is nothing. Everything has been given. All is a gift, but this is especially true of ordinary things. Think about the ordinary things in your life; buttered toast, lilac bushes, warm showers, hot coffee, and friends. Where did all these things come from? Ultimately from God. But why do these things come to you? Because God is your father and he loves you. Marvel in that reality. Ordinary things are glorious simply because they are so abundant. This is the marvelous grace of the ordinary that God gives us so much of it. Every day begins with a sunrise and ends with a sunset and in between it is filled with hundreds of ordinary things. God's good gifts of love to us." -Dear Magazine
Psalm 103:11-12 says,"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west so far does he remove our transgressions from us."
We've all heard people say, "I love you to the moon and back." But God loves us to the heavens and back. He loves us so much that he has washed us clean from our sin. Psalm 103:11-12 says, "as far as the east is from the west so far does he remove our transgressions from us." The meaning behind this is, if you start traveling north you'll eventually start traveling south but if you travel east you'll never travel west unless you turn around. This means that he has removed our sin so far away from us that we will never run into it again. We are washed white as snow. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," -Romans 5:8. God loves us even with all our sin so marvel in the wonder of our God.
In order to see the wonder of our God daily we must overcome our insecurities. We must see the wonder in doing things beyond what we consider our limits. Maybe it's boldly professing your faith or doing something that makes you uncomfortable. In doing that we must come to fully rely on God, increasing our wonder of his strength. Because "Our faith can move mountains." -Matthew 17:20
So let's rise to the challenge and stare with wonder "wide-eyed and mystified, may we be just like a child staring at the beauty of our King," -Bethel Music. Let's become hopelessly lost in the beauty and wonder of our God.