By David Faust
We hear a lot about wonder during this “Winter Wonderland” time of year.
Did you experience wonder as a child at Christmastime? When I was a boy, I would sit in my family’s living room on the corner of our old gray couch, with all the lights off except the ones on the Christmas tree, gazing at the ornaments. My heart was filled with dreams—not merely about presents under the tree, but about what my life would become. Somehow Christmas brought out the wonder in me.
Albert Einstein once wrote, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. He who knows it not, can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle.”
I met a man who became a Christian late in life. Christmas means a lot to him now that he is a believer. He said, “I never want to get over the wide-eyedness of my faith.”
I like that phrase, “the wide-eyedness of my faith.” Someone said a meaningful life has four essential ingredients: wonder, truth, love, and security. All four of those ingredients are found in Jesus Christ, who alone brings life meaning in its fullest sense.
That’s why the carol, “Joy to the World,” includes a refrain about “the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.” How long has it been since you took a wide-eyed look at the wonders of his love?
It’s a wonder Christ came at all. Think of a place you consider warm and pleasant—a picnic by a wooded lake, a walk on a beach at sunset, a family dinner at your grandparents’ house. Now think of the worst place you’ve ever been—a hospital room where you endured pain, a battlefield where you served in war, a place where you felt humiliated or rejected. Would you willingly leave your pleasant place to go to that unpleasant place? In a feeble way, this illustrates what it was like for Christ, the eternal Word, to leave the comforts and security of heaven for the rejection and wounds of earth.
It’s a wonder Christ came the way he did. He didn’t choose the path of luxury. His virgin birth took place, not in a hospital surrounded by medical professionals and sterile equipment, but in a stable accompanied by wide-eyed shepherds who visited his makeshift maternity ward outside Bethlehem’s inn. He wasn’t surrounded by the smells of spiced cider, warm cookies, and candle wax, but by the odors of hay and animal sweat—his newborn body wrapped in the ragged warmth of swaddling clothes. Many parents would be reluctant to allow a newborn baby even to spend a one-hour shift in a manger at one of today’s live nativities. But God was willing to send his Son away to a manger with no crib for a bed.
It’s a wonder he came to the people he did. No religious big-shots, no Scribes and Pharisees gathered at the manger. No political leaders, sports heroes, or big-name entertainers. Just a carpenter, his virgin wife-to-be, and some local sheep farmers.
Most of all, it’s a wonder he came to do what he did. In Luke 2:11, the angel used three lofty titles for the newborn baby: Savior, Christ, Lord. Jesus came to save us from sin and fulfill messianic prophecies. He is the Christ of the cross who arose as King of kings.
Don’t miss the wonders of his love.
This article by David Faust first appeared in The Lookout magazine on December 22, 1996.
David Faust serves as contributing editor of Christian Standard and senior associate minister with East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of 1 & 2 Thessalonians: Unquenchable Faith.
Author: Christian Standard
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Excellent. Truly you are a man of God.