A Wonder-full January

The dark clouds and sleeting rain of the new year always bring some sad and foreboding feelings for me. It was January 20th on one of the those dark, Northern January days when tragedy hit my family and left us reeling in the wake of a reality we could hardly comprehend; living without our Peter. I found myself sitting outside my back bedroom deck one evening and letting out the deepest sobs I could muster. I don’t remember much of what happened next but suddenly I was surrounded by a powerful and comforting presence and with a flitting impression God spoke to me that joy was coming.

As I lived on the island of Lesvos those next years, I watched the turbulent waves of the Aegean toss as desperate faces massed on small rubber rafts came towards us on the shoreline. I think all our jaws were tight as brick until they landed on a safe place where we could help them. The days were cold, the nights dark and wet and there were 1,000s of people needing warm clothes and food. The pots of hot soup didn’t seem like enough solace, and the tea jugs we hiked around camp only provided enough for the ones standing in line at registration all night, but I remember standing in the middle of it all to watch the full moon rise above the water below camp. As I heard countless stories of trauma, I often let my eyes flit up and away from the chaos I was in to the hills above me, cloaked in olive trees and brilliant in the evening sun.

We all know that pain is an active and powerful force the world. The problem with pain is that we can’t control it’s force on the soul and the emotions that seem to marinate us in sadness. When we welcome intimate relationships we automatically welcome pain and when we welcome pain we get hurt and a lot of us just grovel in personal and secondary pain for the rest of our lives, trying to stay away from it the best we can and ending up isolated, afraid, and relatively miserable.

I’ve learned that we can become magnets to the pain of the world and let it erode who we were created to be, or we can ponder and learn to worship someone who overcomes pain. It’s hard to feel that there is anything more powerful than devastation when a nightmare becomes finger pinching reality… when you sit wailing on the bathroom floor and no one is listening, when the friend you never thought would betray you makes stinging remarks that sift into the rawest parts of the soul, and when God seems absolutely silent in the face of insurmountable questions.

It’s the deepest pain that forces us to wrestle the deepest with God and maybe like Jacob (Genesis 32:26) we’re demanding a blessing while we’re face to face with God in the dark night of the soul. I wonder what would happen if we all clung to God in wrestle and said, “I won’t let go until you bless me.”

Many of us just let go and decide He won’t bless us. 

My friend Jo was talking about hurt the other night and I tuned in real close to listen because he understands what pain is. He said, “The only thing that brings some sort of sense to so much pain is that there is a sovereign God working something I don’t see.” I thought about that and wondered if that’s why God replied to Job’s chapters of questions with four whole chapters of questions that draw Job into pondering a lot of wonder-full things about God.

 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
 On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
 when the morning stars sang together
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
 when I made clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
 and prescribed limits for it
    and set bars and doors, and said “Thus far shall you come and no further, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
    and caused the dawn to know its place,
 that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
    and the wicked be shaken out of it?
 It is changed like clay under the seal,
    and its features stand out like a garment.
 From the wicked their light is withheld,
    and their uplifted arm is broken.

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
    or walked in the recesses of the deep?
 Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
    or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
    Declare, if you know all this.

 “Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
    and where is the place of darkness,
 that you may take it to its territory
    and that you may discern the paths to its home?
 You know, for you were born then,
    and the number of your days is great!

 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
    or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
    for the day of battle and war?
 What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
    or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

 “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
    and a way for the thunderbolt,
 to bring rain on a land where no man is,
    on the desert in which there is no man,
 to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
    and to make the ground sprout with grass?

(Job 34 English Standard Version)

Maybe saying, “Wow God” is more powerful than we think, and that’s why God asked Job to consider all that is beautifully made. When Job reflected on the grandeur of creation he replied, “I’ve heard about you with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you: therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 32:5-6).

I wonder how many of us would repent if we could say confidently with Job, “My eye sees you.” Our eyes have seen evil and heartbreak and chaos in a world under enemy control but have they seen goodness and healing and order in the overcoming kingdom of heaven? We choose our gaze.

 I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1-2

Timothy Willard says, “Distraction is the enemy of wonder,” and I think the enemy of our souls has taken on the full-time position of distracting. He doesn’t have any power over us unless He can distract us with all that is wrong. I think that’s why many of us live like Jesus never rose from the dead. We are so undone by the injustice of the grave we can’t lift our eyes to walk with the God of resurrection.

I’ve taken on a practice the last years that has changed me. I do a lot of small and funny things that help me say “WOW!” I usually live in a concrete city and it’s an even greater challenge. I stop everything to run to the rooftop, climb to the highest peak and watch the last sun rays disappear. I wake earlier on a Sunday morning to hike up Mars hill to let the early rays dance across my face. I go the farmers market every Wednesday and load my cart with the brightest and freshest tomatoes, oranges, and grapes. I make a beautiful and healthy cup of hot chocolate. I have a glass teapot so I can say “wow God!” when I watch the fresh mint and orange slices dance around infusing the hot water.

I know we’re created for Eden and longing for Eden and the presence of God walking with us every afternoon in perfect oneness. That can feel like an impossible reality unless we understand that God has literally given us a part of Himself to come be with us and planted reminders of His perfection all around us.

The hardest thing about pain is isolation and God knew that and sent a Saviour who carries sorrows. When His assignment was over God said “I can’t leave my children as orphans in a world under enemy control” and sent the Holy Spirit to be with us always. When we don’t understand the power of simple presence in pain, we can’t understand how the Holy Spirit speaks to pain. He is the very presence of God and when we stand in that presence and can feel it with all our senses it will absolutely transform us. Close presence is the most beautiful comfort in the world when we’re full of pain, and that’s why He’s called “the Comforter.”

The tears still come when we stand in that presence, but the despair is hurled into the horizon forever. The reason we have an epidemic of despair is because we have somehow lost our ability to wonder and worship something greater than the worst reality in the world. Speeding around in gas-propelled automobiles may have made us rich in cash but poor in joy. If the entirety of our days and months and years is spent staring at plastic and screens and concrete and evil it is no wonder we show up at church looking like we got beat by something bad.

The wrong of the world will certainly beat us if our eyes are not lifted, fixated, and tuned into the overcoming reality of the Kingdom of heaven led by a resurrected King who has placed His power within you and me so that we can absolutely thrive in worship above the din of rejection, accusation, and disappointment.

How will His resurrection overcome this 2024?

In the throes of a world gone wrong, here are a few ways you can have a wonder-full January and February and March… and 2024.

1. Commit to practicing intimacy. Close presence is the most beautiful thing in the world. Think of the worst reality you are facing right now, the very one that has brought the most tears. Commit to honesty and growth from the pain and ask God to give you the miracle of knowing Him in pain instead of taking away the feelings. Your theodicy (the study of the goodness of God in suffering) will become rock solid and beautiful as you worship Him in tears.
2. Sync into pace with God. Our minds are so busy with accusation and fear some days we’re just anxious hissing little cats on a Monday morning. Our choice to tune into the pace and voice of God this year can transform us from the inside. When we are calm we can see and when we can see we can learn to wonder and when we wonder we worship! And worship will absolutely change the world.
3. Train your eyes to find beauty everywhere! There is a reason our planet earth is completely marvellous. I think it was C. S. Lewis who made walking to find beauty a daily practice he called “going marvelling.” Take short walks where you learn to tune into the detail of the leaves beneath you and the bare twig structures above you. Stop to listen to the sounds of wind through the firs. Deeply breathe in the air. Touch the bark on the trees and just stare at the detail of the moss growing.
4. Fill your days with quick and easy routines that remind you that goodness overcomes. Light a candle, make tea and sit by the fire and read out loud. If your entire house is chaos unlimited and you can smell the bathroom from the kitchen, say out loud “I’m bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth, Hallelujah!” and order your home with some dance music and hot coffee.

Tuning into the presence of God in the world and saying “Wow!” when we see the beauty of His hand turns us from ruminating worriers to perpetual worshippers. Learning the art of wonder and awe as we pour the tea, sit close with friends, pop the popcorn, dance through the leaves, and serve a steaming pot of soup turns us from a clogged swamp of steaming wrongs to a perpetual waterfall of joyful worship that gushes and splashes all bystanders with a bit of infectious laughter.

So maybe instead of making America great again on screens and innovation we should make America WONDER-full again with the beauty of world changers and worshippers inviting the sorrow-bent soul to stare a little longer at something as beautiful as a well-set table laden with a comforting pot-pie. I’m very certain that evil forces run with their tails between their legs as they find us laughing and celebrating on a common Monday evening, sitting close around a table, catching tears and dipping soup…committed to knowing and showing the beauty of God that overcomes.