Editorial: Wonder

I want to reflect with you upon the sense of wonder which we ought to have as believers. I'd go so far as to suggest that a genuine sense of wonder, of radical amazement, is a characteristic of the believer; and we should be seriously worried if we lack it. The Psalms record the faithful writers' awestruck wonder at God's ways, at the human body, at His acts in history, at creation. Three times a day the Orthodox Jew prays: "We thank thee for thy miracles which are daily with us, for thy continued marvels". And in the evening liturgy they recite the words of Job 9:10: God "does great things past finding out, marvellous things without number". And perhaps spiritual Israel can take a lesson from this; a regular sense of wonder should fill our daily lives. But does it?

I'm sure you've had those rare moments of wonder, of insight, of 'getting it', or feeling you are somewhere along the road of getting it... but where do they come from, and what do they mean? I suggest they are all about our meeting with God. The Bible reveals that God is in search of man. "Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel" (Hos. 9:10); "He found him in a desert land...he encircled him, he cared for him" (Dt. 32:10); "I have found David my servant" (Ps. 89:20). Jeremiah's search for believers was a reflection of God's: "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth" (Jer. 5:1). God hunts for us like a lion, Job came to realize; and in this "You show yourself wonderful to me" (Job 10:16). And we are searching for God. Those awestruck moments of wonder are where God finds us at the time we are searching for Him. Both sides are seeking each other; and in those moments, they meet. Heaven and earth kiss each other; there’s a click, a flash, between Almighty God and us - as we stand at a bus stop, turn left into Acacia Avenue, lay there on our bed meditating.

Defining Wonder

Beholding the stars and the natural world led the Psalmists to wonder. But this was not because they saw them as an end in themselves; the writers looked to the God and the covenant with us which is beyond them. The natural creation is a mystery, a question - but not the answer. To simply observe it won't give the answers. "Pitiless is the silence of the sky". Job went so far as to say: "If I have looked at the sun when it shone, or the moon moving in splendour... I should have been false to God above" (Job 31:26-28). The prophets seem to discount any form of nature worship. The answers to the questions creation poses are to be found, to put it bluntly, in the Bible. Humanity senses that there is something 'there' which is within our reach but beyond our grasp; an undisclosed meaning, an allusiveness to some One beyond, a whisper of some forgotten mother tongue, scattered hints, something cryptic. And we need help to get to it. A passing sense of wonder at the night sky as a man glances at it for a few moments longer than usual one evening from his balcony... needs to lead to the questions in response to God's questions: Who is He? What is His Name, His hope for me, His ability... how should I respond? And the answers to those questions aren't in nature itself, but in God's word. "You are great and do wonders... Teach me your way, O Lord; I will walk in your way" (Ps. 86:10,11).

The Lord repeatedly tells the unbelieving Jews of His day not to marvel / wonder, but to believe. Perhaps we're intended to read in an ellipsis to these passages: '[Don't only] marvel / wonder [but believe]’. If we know that "we are of God", that He is with us, with me personally... then our wonder at creation will be of a different order to that felt by the unbeliever; we will be able to feel some connection with the natural world which unbelievers don't feel. We will be able to say with Job that we are "in league with the stones of the field" (Job 5:23). And thus we will feel God's very real presence; that man is not alone; I am not alone. There is God, and a God who is "for me", Emmanuel, God with us and for us in His Son. The most basic words of Scripture need to be felt by us: "You are with me. Your rod and staff comfort me".

Man In Search Of Wonder

We too often kid ourselves that nobody is really interested in our message. But not so. People are aware that there is something beyond their mundane experience, the emotional flatland and seeking for petty 'fun' which characterizes our postmodern world. Humanity is confronted with a world that alludes to something beyond itself, to a truth beyond experience. Ps. 19 speaks of how the sun, moon and stars speak to humanity with no voice nor words. And yet that very passage is applied in the New Testament to the preachers of the Gospel. In mankind's meeting with us they should be seeing the same unspoken message which there is in the heavens above. We really can lead them on from their vague sense that there's something else out there in life and existence. They may feel that the answers lie shrouded by some impenetrable fog. But we need the spirit of Paul, when he noticed an altar to an unknown God. "Whom you ignorantly seek / worship, Him I will declare to you". People are fast realizing that advanced technology, social reforms, a rational approach to life... simply isn't the answer to our spiritual needs.

What Stops Wonder

If God is replaced merely with a creed, love by habit, then our sense of wonder will wane. "The truth" is a Biblical phrase, but I think it refers essentially to the covenant truthfulness of God to us, rather than implying that those who are "in the truth" therefore know all there is to know about God. If this is what we think - nothing will be very wondrous for us, if we think we know it all already. Every Biblical paradox will be 'easily explained'; there will be for us no sense of mystery left. Whereas I suggest there are many intentional paradoxes in God's word, which defy rational resolution. A statement of faith is all well and good and useful in some ways. But a mere combination of concepts won't of itself produce wonder and awe of God. If misused, it can hinder it. True wonder at God produces creative thinking; for we have interacted with God in those intense moments of amazement, and we will not be inspired by that encounter to return to our familiar paths of thought and behaviour, but rather to quit those rat runs and reach out to Him in newness of life and thinking.

The endless petty things of life naturally stop us having the 'wonder' feelings constantly. In the same way as God has to have some distance and hiddenness from us, so man cannot constantly be enraptured in wonder at God. We can't live in the intensity of the 'wonder' moments all the time. And yet we can too easily glory in the petty distractions of life, rather than seeking to minimize them in our lives. Look up at the sky, and then hold a small coin in front of your eye. That very small thing can obscure the vision of so much. And so it is with the leaking gutters, sick cat, crying baby... And yet I'd say that in the same way there's an afterglow of the evening after the sun has set, so there should be a glow which characterizes our lives, in between the moments of actual wonder.

The Spirit Of Our Age

But like Israel, we can forget God's wonders, lose the intensity of those moments we once shared with Him (Ps. 78:11). Our worship easily becomes mechanical, the flame of praise dies out all too soon. When was the last time you spontaneously did something for the Father and Son, or burst out in heartfelt praise, in response to real wonder? It’s indifference, lack of passion, which is the besetting tragedy of our age. When did you last really shed tears? When were you moved, really wrenched in your gut, by the suffering of others, by the sin of this world, your own sin … When did you last feel ecstatic joy, deep sadness… in this post-modern world of surface level emotion?

In human nature, the pole of regularity is stronger than the pole of spontaneity. We so easily slip into habit, whereas the 'wondrous acts of God' are intended to shake us from this mire of mediocrity. Confronted by a spectacular sunset, modern man at best grabs his cell phone and snaps a picture of it, and then gets distracted forwarding it to his friends. Science and technology have decreased our sense of wonder and spontaneity. Everything can be explained, there's no place left for wonder. Existence has been trivialized; adults spend hours playing dumb games on their keyboards, pressing keys and clicking a mouse in a certain sequence. Study is done in order to get qualifications which enable more money to be earned; but there's a lack of deep personal analysis, any time free from money making is whiled away on the inanities of entertainment. Anything other than 'fun' is frowned upon as too challenging and intrusive. People generally fail to see any ultimate significance in anything. And so when confronted by the overpowering sunset, the sense of awe never runs very deep and soon fades away.

Where Wonder Leads

- Wonder leads to worship. But wonder adds awe and reverence to that worship. And we have to ask how much of that there is in much popular worship today, be it in starchy hymns or rock music. 1 Chron. 16:9 makes the connection between wonder and worship quite plain: "Sing unto him, sing praises unto him; talk of all his wonders".

- The fear or awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wonder isn't a kind of intellectual resignation, giving up on the study of God and retreating into numb feelings. Quite the opposite. True wonder leads to a more earnest seeking after wisdom.

- Related to this, wonder leads to more faith. God reminded Abraham and Sarah: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" (Gen. 18:14). The Hebrew word translated "hard" is that usually translated "wonder". In our moments of wonder, and as the afterglow of them permeates our lives, it becomes easier to believe that nothing is too wonderful for our God of wonders to do for us. For He is the God who does wonders. Jeremiah theoretically learnt the lesson from God's words to Abraham and Sarah; for he alludes to it in Jer. 32:17: "Ah Lord God! Behold, you have made the heaven and the earth by your great power and by your stretched out arm; there is nothing too hard [wonderful] for you". But God has to remind him soon afterwards in Jer 32:26,27: "Behold, I am the LORD.. is there any thing too hard [wonderful] for me?". We think we know all about wonder, when actually we don't. Our lack of total faith shows that we do indeed think God's wonder is limited. Because something is hard / marvellous in our eyes doesn't mean it is in God's eyes (Zech. 8:6).

- Wonder leads to obedience. "Before all your people I will do wonders... [therefore] observe that [covenant] which I command you this day" (Ex. 34:10,11). Israel refused to be obedient because they were "not mindful of your wonders" (Neh. 9:17). Ps. 78:32 likewise: "For all this they sinned still, and believed not in his wondrous works". Our perception of God's wonder is intended to inspire us not to sin, to be obedient to Him at whom we wonder.

- Wonder becomes the base motivation for our witness. "Declare his glory among the gentiles, his wonders among the nations" (1 Chron. 16:24). The Psalms are full of this, once we appreciate that in their primary context many of them were David's preaching to the Gentile nations around him.

A Scream In The Night

For we who are in Christ, there will be those moments when the wonder of the truth of God breaks again and again over us, as a joyful wave. Let us right now try to grasp the wonder of it all. That Christ really will come, soon; that now is my salvation nearer than when I first believed. That the feet of Jesus of Nazareth will surely stand on this earth again, and His Kingdom be eternally here; that He truly was a man of my passions and nature, and yet overcame. That death is death, that this brief and fragile life is the time to serve the Lord, with no fiery hell beneath us, but the sure hope of God’s grace. That through baptism, I truly am part of the seed of Abraham and a partaker in Israel’s Hope. And that by the grace of God’s calling, I am delivered from the fog of error which dogs so many about these things. And that there is, in the end, one body of true believers world-wide believing as I do; that the sun that bids me rest is waking my brethren ‘neath the Western sky, so that the voice of praise is never silent. And in the end, it shall never be silent - for you and I shall live for ever in God’s Kingdom.

There are times of total desperation and disappointment with myself, with my nature, with this world, with humanity, with my brethren. And I know there are just the same for you too. So in our hard moments, the dark nights of the soul, let’s seek to grasp the wonder of it all again. Reflect again on the power of those things which we most surely believe. Look at nature. Feel God searching for you; as you search for Him. And may we find Him, and in wonder be revived, may the thrill of knowing again His love for us spark a light in the black, as a scream in the night, bringing us to know again the personal presence and power of Jesus our Lord. Not for us ‘the same old scene’; working at a desk hour after mindless hour; changing those nappies, preparing the same food at the same times, day after endless day as we take the same route to work, boarding the same bus, coming off at exit 42; in all these things we can be more than conquerors, in the wonder of knowing Him and His saving grace.

Duncan Heaster