Once lit with festive Christmas lights, my neighborhood is now growing dark as lights are being taken down one yard at a time. There’s a little stab of sadness in the return to the plain and ordinary. It’s the loss of the wonder and mystery of Christmas that pains me. But I, too, will soon pack away the decorations and lights.

Wonder is so easily squelched by the routine, mundane, bizarre, and the tragic. This past year, nearly every vestige of it has been stomped out of us. But I want to keep it alive in my heart.

Wonder is the sense of awe that stirs the soul when magnificent truth beyond our capacity to comprehend is encountered. It sweeps over me when I experience the breathtaking mind-warping grandeur and majesty of God’s creation. As Job said, it causes the heart to pound and leap from its place. (Job 37:1)

I was a scuba diver in my younger days and water skied once. There’s a heart-pounding exhilaration in the spray and whipping wind as one zips over the water pulled by the power of a speeding boat, but the only wonder I experienced that day was the wonder of surviving. I much prefer the quiet depths of the water and the wonders beneath the surface.

Slipping into the depths of the holy Word of God, his Spirit stirs my heart with wonder as I ponder the breathtaking mind-warping magnificence of Truth. The greatest wonder that causes my heart to leap from its place is the unconditional, unwavering, inexhaustible love of God that embraces me just as I am in all my failures and leads me beyond them.

The Sovereign God who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name (Isaiah 40:26) died to save me from sin’s curse. Now he will never ever leave me, and every morning he calls me to follow him. Wonder of wonders.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!