Week 15: Wonder-full

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

(Isaiah 9:6)

For Thou art great and doest wondrous deeds; Thou alone art God.

(Psalm 86:10)

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His  power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.

(Hebrews 1:3-4)

Our family has just returned home after a week sojourn in the beautiful Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming.  We arrived at the onset of six inches of alabaster snow.  The boys, full of wonder, played for hours outside making snowmen and snow angels and snow forts as huge snow flakes settled to the silent earth below. God snowed us in to the valley as the mountainous uplift of some ancient sea shimmered in the distance. With no where to go and no way to get there, we ate good food and visited long hours. We watched football and Swiss Family Robinson and ate turkey and ham.  We fed the fire and the boys drove Dad's tractor. They had fun plowing a path to the road.

We relaxed.

We rested.

God's Sabbath snow blanketed the earth and it smothered my ambition.  

By the end of the week, the snow abated and we ventured out into a winter wonderland.  The roads, cleared of slush and warmed by the sun, reminded us that our respite was coming to a close and pointed us towards home.  It was a two day trip from the highlands to our home on the plains and soon I realized that the blanket of snow had not completely covered my wanderlust.

At the hotel on our way home, eating breakfast in the hotel lobby, my wife asked the couple sitting next to us, "Where is your family going?"

"We are moving to Jackson Hole," they said, "from Tennessee."

"Enjoy the winter!" I thought as I tried to mask my desire for similar adventure; pulling up stakes and striking out into the great unknown. I've been to Jackson. I know it's beautiful.  "Awesome!" I managed to say as I poured more coffee. But I wasn't feeling it and I was quiet for the next several hours, lost in my thoughts as we listened to a book on tape and made our way slowly over the surface of the Earth.

And that still small voice spoke to me as the asphalt rolled past,  "It isn't something you are missing. It's someone.  The government will rest on His shoulders, He's a king, after all.  And His name is Wonderful Counselor..."  There was more, but that was it.  I looked up the word translated, "Wonderful" and it means "magnificent," "grandiose," "beyond comprehension," not just, "nice," or "good," but mind-boggling.  We worship a God who bathes everything that He creates with mind-boggling wonder. The King's expertise is on full display in the Big Horn Mountains, but it is here, even on the plains. It isn't something we see, it is something we feel...it is wonder. Children get it and adults need it. Without it, beauty becomes just scenery and adventure becomes just work and Christmas becomes just a day off.  

"Cowboy, are you glad to be back home?" my Kansas bride asked with the fading sunlight sparkling in her eyes, full of wonder.

"Absolutely!" I said, "The sky is bigger here."

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

Photo from www.freeimages.com #775525