Wonder

Everything in this world is wonder filled. It is only by familiarity that the wonder disappears. We see something so often that it no longer intrigues us and causes to stop and catch our breath, or makes it so that we cannot speak.

One of the few things that cause me to do this is the night sky. It also brings forth from within me a hunger and a joy that I cannot describe. The best description I have is from the Chronicles of Narnia, a fierce joy. I can stare at the moon and stars for hours as they chart their way across the sky and not grow weary. The night sky observed stirs up so many emotions within me.

God created the stars and moon and sun and sky too, but the pinnacle of creation was reserved for man, both male and female, whom he made in his own image. In the true image of God he created them. I look at the night sky, but I do not look at people the same way. Do we look at people and regard them with wonder because we are looking at the very image of God? Do we show each and every person the respect they deserve as one who is made in the image of God? Or are they just the one blocking you from merging to take your exit?

Are we moved by creation, but not by the Creator?

Biography, or Gospel?

I was thinking the other day while sitting in church about the Gospels. What are we reading or hearing when we go to them? There is nothing like their style in our modern literature that I can think of. There was a certain type of biography back then that they resemble called “bios,” (which is Greek for “life”). It is a type of biography that focuses on the highlights of a person’s life without going into all of the details. The reasoning is that the people hearing the “bios” only wanted to hear the things for which this person was worth listening for about. Therefore many things from a person’s life would not be included, like boring material. You might be dropped into the person’s life halfway through their life. This style is not like our current style of biography, where everything from birth to death is accounted for in chronological order (chronology was not critical for a “bios”).

All of this brings me to the titles that these Gospels have always had. The Gospel according to Matthew. The Gospel according to Mark. The Gospel according to Luke. The Gospel according to John. This begs the question as to the focus of the books. Is it Jesus, or is it the Gospel? (You might argue that to speak of one is to speak of the other.) I suspect that the focus is the Gospel, based on other books in the New Testament as well. As an example, the Book to the Hebrews presents some of the highest Christology of the New Testament because the people to whom it was written were in a great crisis. There was the threat that they would turn back to Judaism, and the only solution to that problem was a higher view of Christ.

This brings me to the approach that we (which as a Wall Street Journal writer says is a first person pronoun in journalism) have when we come to the Gospels. I too often come to the Gospels merely looking for information, a fact boast, as I would if I ever went to read a biography (which I don’t, because they are boring). The Gospels were not written merely to inform, but to change lives. They brought the Gospel, the Good News from God of salvation from sins through Jesus Christ.

All this is to say that we do things for a purpose, whether for good or for evil. We might as well come to the Gospels with the right purpose and mind set. We ought not to go to the Gospels to merely inform ourselves, but to submit ourselves to the good word, to be changed by the Word from God.