As we enter the Christmas season, we enter a season of wonder. However, our busy lives too often
mask the precious gift of wonder and dull our curiosity to uncover it. This Christmas, I want to challenge you to seek and discover wonder and, as a result, experience a wonder-filled Christmas.
The Christmas story in the Bible is filled with accounts of wonder. Young Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, was filled with wonder when the angel of God came and told her she would be the mother of the Son of God. Young Joseph, the carpenter betrothed to Mary, was filled with wonder when the angel met him, telling him to marry the virgin Mary who was with child. The Shepherds were filled with wonder when a group of angels interrupted their normal evening outside of Bethlehem to sing and announce the birth of Christ and telling the Shepherds where they could find the new born King of the Jews. The Wisemen, looking into the heavens, were so enveloped with wonder that they left everything to embark on a long and costly journey to follow the bright star in the East.
Consider each of these experiences of wonder in the Christmas story for a moment and one of the commonalities that pervades them all: wonder at ordinary times. In each circumstance, the biblical characters in the Christmas story were interrupted by wonder-filled experiences in the midst of their ordinary. Christmas reminds us that wonder isn’t so much hiding from us, but we are hiding from it. Our preoccupied and dulled senses have become blinded to wonder in our God-created world through the intoxicating busyness of life and our self-centered lives.
This is part of the reason why we love Christmas through the eyes of a child, eyes that have yet to be clouded by skepticism and the discontent that dulls our senses to the wonder that surrounds us.
This Christmas, I would challenge you to see the God-created, incredibly beautiful and wonder-filled world around you. A world in which God is working and a world filled with beauty on open display in the gallery of ordinary, testifying to the greatness and awesomeness of God.
Wonder is not hiding in a secret place with a secret lock solely reserved for the rich few who can afford to open it; rather, it is a gift that is found in the ordinary, available to ordinary people, in ordinary circumstances just like you. This Christmas, open your eyes to God, open your eyes to Jesus, and see His wonder-filled creation where wonder is constantly on display in the gallery of the ordinary. Don’t allow the dullness of skepticism, discontent and ignorance to blind you to God’s wonder proclaimed through creation and experienced through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
