Wonder & Love: Part A 

Evening was quickly drawing to a close and my family and I were prepping our campsite. Behind our fire pit stretched out the colorful backdrop of Cave Run Lake illuminated in the brilliant colors of the setting sun. Though we were late arriving and needed to get our tent set up, I could not help but pause regularly just to stare at the masterpiece being painted before my eyes. An amazing feeling gripped my soul. I am sure you have felt it before at such times –the inescapable grasp of wonder.

I felt it again a few hours later. The sun had long since set and my family and I were gathered around the campfire. The flames had died down leaving the breathing brilliance of the coals behind as they subtly ebbed and flowed with an inner fire. I have always been fascinated by the bright orange living light of embers. It is an effect and color that can only be mimicked in art. None but God could have created something like that.

But, my wonder came from more than these mysteries of creation. I could look across the fire and see my son and daughter hypnotized by the glowing of those same embers. I found myself trying to discern the thoughts running through their heads. Did they feel the same sense of wonder that grasped me when I stared into the fire? Do they have any idea of the wonder that took hold of my heart when I first saw them on the screen during an ultrasound, or when I first laid eyes upon them at their birth? It is a precious gift to experience wonder.

One of the most beautiful proofs of the existence of God and His love for us, to me, is the gift of wonder. If God had made the universe purely in grey tones, we would not have been any the wiser. Had God left us without the senses to see the colors He did create, we would never have missed them. God could have created us without the ability to have relationships of love. He could have created us as non-relational beings, without senses or the ability to derive pleasure and joy from them. He could have created us without the ability to sense and experience wonder. He could have refrained from creating us at all.

It was His delight, not only to create us, but to create us with the ability to experience delight ourselves. These are the actions of a God who loves us and has good planned for us.

Psalm 139:13-14 - 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalm 19:1-2 - 1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

So, when the world seems like a place of hardship and storm; when we are tempted to feel alone or forgotten –remember wonder. Every experience we have that stirs our hearts with wonder proclaims we are not alone. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And we are loved.