When I was a child
What do you wonder about? When I was a child, I wondered why it took so long for Christmas to come, and what I gifts I would receive. I wondered why I had to learn to spell words like ‘what,’ ‘when,’ and ‘went’ when those words didn’t mean anything, at least not like ‘cat,’ ‘dog,’ or ‘monkey.’ I wondered about concrete, material things.
One of my favorite Christmas carols is, “I Wonder as I Wander”. The lyrics express wonder at the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I confess that I do not often wonder about this miracle that has made me free from guilt. I can still dredge up my former errors of judgment and remember the guilt I used to feel, but most of the time I am free. This makes me wonder if I’ve become insensitive to the horrible death Jesus died so that I could enjoy this freedom and look forward to eternal life with Him. I’ve even stopped wondering what heaven will be like.
I am fully known
Instead, I wonder at the vast expanse of the starlit sky at night and my own smallness. We have a photograph in our home of me, a tiny dot in a white raincoat standing on the beach with the surging waves as a backdrop, and the vast, beautiful, cloudy sky above me. I wonder about the miracle that God knows me better than I know me; and even though I am smaller than a grain of sand in the vastness of all creation, God cares about me, loves me. How is this possible?
Changes
I wonder about lesser things, too. Like the rise and fall of the creek where I love to walk. It changes with the seasons. I marvel at the seasonal changes of many things. The prairie coming alive in the spring, maturing over the summer, and dying back in the fall. Since I am getting older with ever increasing speed, I wonder about the seasonal changes in my life. For instance, it never occurred to me, in all our discussions about retirement that we would be older and have less energy than we did when we were having those pre-retirement discussions. I wonder about my own blindness to what ought to be obvious. What else don’t I see?
Clarity
This makes me wonder about the clarity that will come once I cross over the boundary between mortal life and my eternal home. Will I laugh at my former blindness? Will what I imagine to be rational thought suddenly appear to be the thoughts of a young child? Will I wonder then over the lies and half truths I clung to while mortal? Or in the presence of all the power and love in existence, will I stop all thinking and simply be enfolded?
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 (NIV)
What do you wonder about? Please comment and add your thoughts to mine.
