Wonder - Introduction

I don’t know what you were taught growing up, but in my household, Christmas was a magical time filled with all kinds of wonder.

As soon as Thanksgiving was over and the Christmas decorations started coming out, my heart began to beat faster, wild with anticipation. I believed in all the stories I was told about Christmas - Santa Claus and the elves at the North Pole, Frosty the Snowman, and yes, even Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In fact, throughout the month of December, as my family and I would drive around at night, I’d see those red lights blinking at the top of what I assumed were radio towers, and I was sure it was Rudolph taking practice runs for the big night.

But as is often the case, as I got older, the wonder of Christmas began to wane. Christmas became a busy season of shopping and scurrying about in order to spend a few moments with loved ones.

However, if I’m honest, on Christmas day, I still had a stirring of wonder in my heart, but it shifted from Santa Claus and Reindeer, to looking at the night sky and thinking about the story of Christ. I started thinking about that night, over 2000 years ago, when magi arrived from the east, having followed the light from a star that led them to a

manger in a small town called Bethlehem. I thought about the angels appearing to the shepherds to announce the birth of the new king. And if I’m honest, I even wondered at the beauty of getting a few quiet and peaceful moments with those that I love most.

This year, for Christmas at Crosswalk, we’ll be exploring the Christmas story found in Luke 1-2 through the lens of wonder. Wonder is defined in our dictionary as “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” In the Bible, however, wonder is often associated with the idea of seeing God more clearly among our humanness.

I often associate wonder with a child-like sense of awe at something you can’t quite put into words, something so wonderful, so beautiful, so amazing, that it almost takes your breath away. And if it involves seeing the divine among our humanity more, then wonder is what happens when I witness an incredible sunset, hear a baby giggle, sing a song in worship that brings tears to my eyes, and so much more.

In order to let ourselves wonder at this story, however, we’re going to have to let something go first. You see, one of the biggest enemies of wonder is familiarity. The more familiar we become with something, the less inspiring it seems, or the less mystery it entails, and thus, the less wonder we have for it.

I liken it to the main character in the Pixar movie WALL-E, that came out in 2008. WALL-E was a robot left on a post- apocalyptic world, whose job it was to gather the garbage left behind in hopes to one day restore life on planet earth. But WALL-E did something interesting. Every day, he collected something that caused him to wonder; a broken watch, an old rubik’s cube, and other items we consider garbage. To WALL-E, these items were beautiful and they filled him with awe and wonder (I have a figure of WALL-E in my office to remind me to live with wonder).

So let go of the familiar and prepare your hearts to live through these next four weeks with a sense of awe and wonder, with child-like eyes wild with anticipation, and the story of a God who became human, in order to bring us back to Him.

Grace, Peace, and Merry Christmas,