Astonishment

 This modern world has left us empty and bored. We see amazing video or images that do not fill us with wonder or awe. It seems that everything is for sale. We have replaced great art with great artifice.

Have you ever seen a great athlete do an amazing feat and it filled you with wonder? Have you ever been moved to tears by music? Have you ever looked with wonder at a great painting? There is a word to describe what we feel when we are moved by great art or accomplishment. It is the word astonishment. We wonder, how did they do that? We wonder how they came up with that idea. While we feel connected to them as people, we know that in a thousand years we could never do what they did.

This sense of astonishment is true in our walk of faith. God deliberately makes Himself simple enough for anyone to understand and believe; but He is also so deep and complex that great men spend their lives trying to understand who God is and how God does what only God can do. This idea of how is primary to our sense of wonder at God and human achievement.

I look back at pastor Mitchell with a sense of wonder. How he did what he did. How he helped men become all that they could be. You could fast for 40 days and 40 nights and read your Bible until you pass out and you will never be half the man that Wayman Mitchell was. Pastor did not come up with all of the great ideas. But men inspired by God were allowed to thrive under his leadership.

AI takes what we give it and produces some kind of art or artifice. God created the world out of things that before never existed. He spoke a word and created the natural world out of nothing.

We celebrate salvation as the wonder that it is. We wonder how a sick person is healed. We can be moved by great preaching. There is definitely room for astonishment in our church.