Wonder

It's so easy, so comfortable to live in the box of things we know. We strive for exact and final answers to our questions. We look skeptically upon that which we cannot fully comprehend. 
The unknown is scary. So we run. We think, we wrestle, and we try to work ourselves to the answer. 

One of the most beautiful things about Jesus, to me, is that I cannot ever fully understand. At times it's frustrating, exhausting, even overwhelming. But then I'm reminded that if I could know everything that God knows, if I could understand how and why He does what He does, there would be no reason to depend on Him. I would not need him because I'd already know all things. 

Following Christ is all about the journey. There will never be a time while I'm alive when I will have reached the final destination in my walk with Christ. I will never achieve perfection, or total knowledge. But that's the beauty in it. Every day I can search and grow and learn and become closer to my Jesus. 

We try so hard to box God in. To strap him down and pull out black and white answers to life. We long for the black and white because it's safe. It's right or it's wrong. No gray. Gray is scary. I'm right and you're wrong and that's all there is to it. But what if that's not how it was supposed to be? What if it is gray? What if the black and white mindset is keeping me from loving someone who desperately needs it? What if the black or white or gray doesn't even matter?

I think we miss out on so much of the goodness that God intended for us when we let ourselves go to the black and white. We stop thinking once we have our answer. We stop listening. We stop growing. In my experience the closer I get to Jesus, the less I care about exact answers. The journey is joy because each step takes me closer to Him.

Donald Miller says it this way in his book, Blue Like Jazz: "At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is the feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder."

Take some time today to wonder. Wonder at the things He's done. Wonder at the things He's doing. Wonder at the world around you. Wonder at the little daily blessings.

It's good to be alive. It's good to be loved by Jesus. It's good to have another chance every day to serve and honor and worship Him. Remember that and smile.