For the last while, I’ve been wondering about wonder – those things that amaze us, those things that leave your mouth open in awe.
For example, my daughter and I are both fascinated by sharks, especially the big ones, the dangerous ones. I love watching them hurl themselves out of the water, how fast they can swim and how ferocious they are.
Then I see this lady, swimming with great whites! No cage, no safety gear, just her, her flippers and these three-meter long leviathans. Amazing! How amazing would that be, to swim with sharks! Nope. Nadda, not happening. They scare me near to death. There are statistics that say you have a better chance of being abducted by aliens than being attacked by a shark, with me, that's enough. A chance, no matter how small, is still a chance. I’m not going to jump in any water with the possibility of any sharks being around. I get the willies swimming in a pool after watching “Jaws”.
My faith in statistics is very small. There is a huge difference between faith and wonder. There is a story in the bible about Faith and Wonder. It's in Mark 6:45. It happens right after Jesus feeds the 5,000 men and their families. What happens next is Jesus sends his disciples onto the sea of Galilee while he says goodbye to the crowd. It's getting late, around 3 a.m., and Jesus, doing what Jesus does, starts to walk across the lake on the water. Amazing! He sees his crew out on the water, struggling in the waves and feels for them, but when they see him, they are terrified. They think he's a ghost!
But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage! I am here!” Then he climbed into the boat, and the wind stopped. They were totally amazed, for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves. Their hearts were too hard to take it in.”
You might think that their being amazed would be some kind of complementary observation, but here you would be wrong. Here, wonder is a liability to faith. These men have been with Jesus day and night. They have seen people healed, dead people raised to life. He's already calmed a storm just a few chapters before this event! And they are continually amazed. They were stuck in wonder.
Where Jesus’ heart for them was for them to walk in faith. Being amazed is just that, it's an observation it's impersonal. It's like being a fan. Faith is where your heart is invested and engaged to the point where it makes a difference in the way you live.
When it comes to faith in Jesus it's when we move beyond wondering at him and what he's done to where it becomes personal. We are no longer spectators. We submit to him and become his children. And it’s God’s intention that all of His children are not to simply acknowledge the wonderful, amazing, gracious, glorious, loving, transforming work Jesus does, but that all of His children would be participants in that work.
God builds faith in us, as we embrace Him by faith and we live by faith, we then become his tools to do his work. So, wonder at the amazing things God has done, but don't get stuck there. Use that wonder as a springboard to faith, where we are no longer spectators but participants, living by faith in the one whose given us His life so we can have full life with love and hope.
Pastor Mike Burns is with Cornwall Christian Church. A guest sermon runs regularly in Saturday’s Guardian and is provided through Christian Communications.
