Star of Wonder

This morning I jumped ahead to the first set of readings from the One Year Bible.  I realize how much I’ve missed reading a substantial chunk of Scripture every day.  Whenever I start a new reading program, there’s a part of my brain that tries to short-circuit the process.  The lazy part.  Which says, “Why read all this stuff?  You’re not going to remember half of it.  You’re only doing this out of some sense of duty and obligation.  Religious zeal.  Calvinist guilt.  You don’t need it.  You’re not really going to get anything out of it.”  The truth is that, like eating vegetables and exercising, daily Bible reading is a discipline.  And as with any good discipline, it shapes you in ways you can neither fully anticipate nor appreciate until you’ve done it for awhile.

Here’s the benefit I recognized first thing this morning: wonder.  I’m immersed in a world that is practical and fact-driven.  That makes conclusions based on evidence.  At any given time the evidence isn’t promising.  This morning’s news is full of retrospectives on the past year.  Hurricanes.  Shootings.  Political scandals.  A fiscal cliff (?).  None of it points in a hopeful direction.

But then I open the Bible and read:

·         The account of a God who, by the power of his word, called into existence an entire universe, and then made us and gave us a privileged place as his companions.

·         The story of a young woman who, in accordance with centuries’ worth of prophecy, conceived a child by the power of the Holy Spirit, and gave birth to the Savior of the world.

·         A star that served as a cosmic billboard to the Savior’s birth, and a chorus of testifying angels. 

·         A psalm that declares that those who choose God’s way of restraint, and grace, and hope, will ultimately prevail.

·         A proverb that maintains that there is a wisdom subtly woven through Creation that points to the Creator and shows us a better way.

There’s more to this world than data.  More than what we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, manipulate with our hands.  The God who set the stars in place and fashioned us from the raw elements of the cosmos is still at work, shaping and guiding our reality.  God made it good.  God continues make good that which seems to us only bad.  And God has good plans – for you; for me; for the world he so loves.  Start the new year with a sense of wonder.