Reclaim Awe

How often we connect the word awesome to just the ordinary.  It belongs to the extraordinary.  The word actually means, “inspires an overwhelming feeling of reverence or fear” but somehow it has been reduced to meaning “very cool.”

The Word became flesh – if there was ever an awesome event, this is it.  Wonder and astonishment belong to the Christmas story when Omnipotence left celestial comfort and the praise of angels to reside in a human womb – to live and die for mankind from the creche to the cross.  For you and me-kind.  Awesome.

It’s enough to make a shepherd quake.

Unfortunately, the Christmas story can become familiar because we have heard it so often. That’s why we have to look at it – see it with fresh eyes.  And we can, if we reframe our perspective to uncover and reclaim our awe once again.  Search for the radical holy in-between the lines – it’s right there. We can’t read the gospel of Luke 2 without reading the gospel of John 3:16 ~ the why.  The reason for the birth of Jesus , for God so loved the world  . . .

When faith and sight collide it makes for wonder.

Consider the magnitude of what happened because of the real life nativity as we turn the pages of scripture.  Angel visits leading up to the wondrous, using ordinary people and places to bring about the extraordinary – the wonderstruck mystery we try and explain.

Miracles are unexplainable.  That’s what makes them miracles. 

Isaiah wrote an amazing description of how things would be altered with the birth of the Messiah.  The point of Jesus birth, life and death was to change the world because it would instill hope in the lives of generations forever.  So why wouldn’t it?  If a pandemic can change a planet to bring fear to mankind then an almighty God can send majesty from heaven to bring a reverential fear.  Done and done ~ awesome!

Jesus came at a time of darkness when His world wasn’t so merry and bright.  He comes to us faithfully when our world isn’t so merry and bright.  For many, it’s certainly true as we come to a close of a very difficult year.  Christmas can get buried beneath our circumstances.  Don’t let it.  Choose to be intentional and change your gaze to recapture the awe of an amazed child.  How I love to remember my children when they had the simple wonders of childhood within their faces.

Believe like a child – it’s within the broken pieces that glitters the hope of glory among shards of wonder to change our perspective, dramatically. It’s where our resurrected heart sheds peace that passes human understanding.

Sort of like a miracle . . .

And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terribly frightened (in awe) . . . Luke 2:9