This week I’m wondering about God’s ways and his choices. They seem so simple and genuine and humble. As simple as choosing to enter the world through a birth. As genuine as the ordinary people he chose for this extraordinary event. As humble as a stable.
I’ve been wondering many things.
What was it like for Mary to be asked to bear the child who would one day bear the sin of the world? What was it like for Joseph, a man described as “faithful to the law”, to learn his betrothed had, he thought, done him wrong? And to choose grace over condemnation, even before God corrected his understanding of the situation? That’s a wonder in itself.
Mary and Joseph both said ‘yes’ to what God asked of them. There is an eternity of wonder in this response considering what he was asking of them.
Mary had her own wondering. When the angel told her she would bear a child, she asked, rather pragmatically, “How can this be when I am a virgin?” God can’t do this; not with the condition I’m in. These are things too wonderful to believe.
We’ve asked a similar question ever since, haven’t we? God’s message and our conditions are different but our question is the same as Mary’s. He tells us that we are so deeply loved that he sent his only Son into the world not to condemn but to save (John 3:16-17). It seems too wonderful to believe. We ask, “How can this be when I am…me?”
A hauntingly beautiful Appalachian folk carol expresses this well: “I wonder as I wander out under the sky that Jesus my Savior did come for to die for poor on’ry people like you and like I…”
And finally, there is the beautifully expressed ‘wondering’ of Sister Grace Remington of the Cisterian Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey. What might it be like for the pregnant Mary to meet with Eve? In her moving crayon and pencil art, there is much to ponder. What do you see? What do you wonder? What would it have been like for Eve to know the world that had gone so wrong could now be redeemed and restored?
I never want to lose the wonder of the gospel. For it is, in the words of J. I. Packer, “the most wonderful message the world has ever heard, or will hear.”
“The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message the world has ever heard, or will hear.”
Advent suggestion: As you wander through the days of this week, ask God to open your eyes to see something wonderful in the ordinary people around you and in yourself. Where do you see the wonder of the gospel at work?
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