One of the things I do every week on the Sabbath to help set it apart from other days is play Christian music. My toddler and I both love music, so we have something on every morning and a good part of the rest of the day. For the Sabbath, we have a playlist of contemporary Christian, Messianic music, and traditional hymns. We were listening to this playlist on the drive to church services a couple weeks ago, and Jean Watson’s version of a song called “Wonder” came on (here’s a YouTube link). Her music often strikes a cord with me; it feels so worshipful and the lyrics and style help me feel connected to the Lord. This particular song is one of my favorites, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since that day.
Here’s a link to the full lyrics (which I won’t quote here for copyright reasons). The song is a sort of prayer/blessing expressing the desire that God’s people “never lose” their “wonder” at Him. It’s a call to sit and stare at “the King” and appreciate His beauty. It’s using the word “wonder” in a sense that I don’t think we often consider. In this context, “wonder” means “the quality of exciting amazed admiration” and “rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience” (Merriam-Webster, “wonder,” noun, meanings 2 and 3).
When was the last time you thought about God with “amazed admiration” and focused on Him “with rapt attention or astonishment” simply because He is awesome?
I think it’s easy for us to avoid feeling wonder. We’re busy people living in a busy world, and wonder requires time to rest, to meditate on God’s nature, and to marvel at all He is and does. We also live in a scientific, logical world where we expect things to be explainable by normal means, and wonder involves recognizing there’s something higher, inexplicable, and marvelous than all that. We also tend to be self-focused and self-reliant, and wonder involves looking outside ourselves and standing in awe of the glorious God.
The Wonders of God
Interestingly, while expressions of wonder and amazement directed at God are a big part of the Bible (particularly in the psalms), most of the time the word is used it’s talking about the “wonders” that God does. This happens a lot when Biblical writers talk about God doing wonders among the Egyptians and delivering Israel (Ex. 3:20; 11:9-10; Deut. 4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 26:8; 1 Sam. 6:6; Ps. 105. 26; 106:7; 135:9; Neh. 9:10; Jer. 32:20-21; Acts 7:36) as well as wonders He worked or promised to work for them as they inherited the Promised Land (Ex. 34:9-10; Josh. 3:5).
Oh give thanks to Yahweh.
1 Chronicles 16:8-13, WEB
Call on his name.
Make what he has done known among the peoples.
Sing to him.
Sing praises to him.
Tell of all his marvelous works.
Glory in his holy name.
Let the heart of those who seek Yahweh rejoice.
Seek Yahweh and his strength.
Seek his face forever more.
Remember his marvelous works that he has done,
his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth,
you offspring of Israel his servant,
you children of Jacob, his chosen ones.
We are meant to remember the wonderous things God has done and express our amazement and appreciation, as King Nebuchadnezzar, did (Daniel 4:2-4; 6:26-28) and as Bible writers did in Job, Psalms, and Isaiah (Job 9:10; 37:4; 42:3; Ps. 40:5; 65:8; 77:11; 89:5; 107:8; 111:3-4; 136:3-5; 139:13-14; Isaiah 25:1; 29:14). The first verse I thought of when I decided to write about this topic is one of those Psalms:
I will remember Yah’s deeds;
Psalm 77:11-15, WEB
for I will remember your wonders of old.
I will also meditate on all your work,
and consider your doings.
Your way, God, is in the sanctuary.
What god is great like God?
You are the God who does wonders.
You have made your strength known among the peoples.
You have redeemed your people with your arm,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph.
In a world where so many people don’t believe in miracles or think they were only something for Bible times, not our modern age, we might not often think of the Lord as “the God who does wonders.” It’s something I think we ought to consider, though. We can, like the Psalmists, remember God’s “wonders of old” and “meditate on all” the work He is doing. Perhaps that will also help us open our eyes to notice the wonders He is doing today.
Reacting With Wonder
God works amazing wonders, in the past and today. He is, by His very nature, wonderful. And when Jesus came–God in the flesh–people noticed. One of the things we see people in the Bible wondering at are the wonderful works and words of Jesus Christ (Luke 4:22; 13:17; 24:41).
Great multitudes came to him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others, and they put them down at his feet. He healed them, so that the multitude wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the injured healed, the lame walking, and the blind seeing—and they glorified the God of Israel.
Matthew 15:23031, WEB
Contrast this reaction with those of the Jewish leaders who refused to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Before Jesus’s final Passover and crucifixion, “when the chief priests and the experts in the law saw the wonderful things he did … they became indignant” (Matt. 21:15, NET). The wonders that Jesus did confirmed that He was truly the Messiah (Acts 2:22) and the wonders that His followers did after His death and resurrection proved the truth of the gospel (Acts 2:43; 4:29-30; 5:12; 6:8; 14:3; 15:12; Rom. 15:19; 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:1-4).
The contrast in how new believers and stubborn, resistant religious leaders reacted to God’s wonders continued after Jesus’s death. When God healed a lame man through Peter and John in Acts 3, the people “were filled with wonder and amazement” (Acts 3:10, WEB) and “many of those who had listened to the message believed” (Acts 4:4, NET). But the religious leaders angrily confronted the apostles and put them in jail (Acts 4:1-22). The next day, “After threatening them further, they released them, for they could not find how to punish them on account of the people, because they were all praising God for what had happened” (Acts 4:21, NET). Instead of believing when they saw wonders, they threatened the men God chose to work through.
Holding on to wonder is important to faith. We need to make sure we recognize the awesome majesty of the God Who Does Wonders. Now, that doesn’t mean we just believe whatever we see; we are warned about “lying wonders” that could lead people astray at the end times (2 Thes. 2:9; Matt. 24:24; Mark 13:22). We must exercise discernment to avoid being taken in by counterfeit Messiahs, but at the same time we should not let our vigilance make us blind to true wonders nor dull our sense of wonder (Acts 2:16-21; 13:38-41). A sense of wonder can be hard to come by in today’s world, but it is one of the things that we should feel for our amazing, wonderful God.
Featured image by Pearl from Lightstock
Song Recommendation: “Wonder” by Amanda Cook
Like An Anchor 