From Belief to Awe

He who can no longer pause to wonder, is as good as dead.   
- Albert Einstein
 
       I share Einstein's affirmation that anyone who is not lost on the rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe "is as good as a burnt out candle."  
- Madeleine L'Engle

 
August 11, 2009

Dear St. Paul’s Family,
 
Back in college, I often babysat a 3-month old boy named Zack.  He was equal parts adorable and energetic, but neither matched his innate curiosity.  His baby blues were wide-eyed with wonder, and I’ll never forget the day he discovered his hands.
 
To Zack, hands and fingers were strange aliens, orbiting in the subspace of his budding awareness.  He watched in amazement as these strange creatures wiggled and waved, clenched and fanned, much to his endless delight.  He’d smile at his fingers, then suck on them, then giggle at them, all the while appreciating the mysteries of his fledgling body.
 
Zack is all grown up today, and by now I suspect that all of the mystery is gone.  He has since taken courses in biology and anatomy, and discovered terms like “muscles” and “metacarpals,” “nerve impulses” and “ligaments.”  He has learned about the complex interplay of biological systems that make the ordinary task of wiggling one’s fingers understandable and mundane.   But with knowledge comes loss.  Gone is the sense of child-like wonder, along with his wide-eyed curiosity.

Curiosity evokes wonder, but familiarity revokes mystery.
 
Lifelong disciples know this all too well.  Over time, as we learn the language of the faith and ritualize our belief through spiritual practices, our base of knowledge about God and the Christian life grows.  But with every insightful epiphany, every addition to our ever-expanding corpus of spiritual understanding we forfeit a dose of curiosity.  We lose a sense of the mysterious.  The more we know, the more we grow, and the more we “put an end to childish ways.”
 

FROM BELIEF TO AWE

Renita Weems is a writer, minister, Biblical scholar, and professor of Old Testament studies at Vanderbilt University.  She is well-known for her writing, speaking, and pioneering scholarship, and for two decades has mastered and taught the tenets of the faith.  But beneath the façade, she was lost in a spiritual crisis, in which she experienced abandonment from God.
 
Her book, “Listening for God” chronicles her long, painful journey through silence and doubt, and is interspersed with entries from her journal during this difficult time.  At the end of the book, as this wilderness experience drew to a close and she emerged from her darkness, she wrote the following:
 

11 February 1995
    I feel myself turning the corner. After nine months of chaotic silence, the desire to hear my thoughts out returned today.  I woke up with an appetite for a well thought-out thout. I started a book this morning with the words “For everything I have learned there has been a season for getting it done.”  The season of my melancholy appears to be rapidly vanishing.  The storm is passing over.  Hallelujah!!
    A miracle isn’t a miracle because it defies explanation.  A miracle is a miracle because it is experienced as a miracle.  It happened at the time when I needed grace most, namely, on the last day for miracles.  

The truly remarkable transformation is not the one from
unbelief to belief
nor from despair to hope.
The truly remarkable (and frightening) transformation is from
Dogma to wonder
from
Belief to awe.
Today, awe returned.

(Renita Weems, “Listening for God.”  New York:  Simon & Shuster, 1999)

A FAITH REFRESHER

Regardless of how long you have been a Christian, whether you are a long-time church member or a first-time follower, we could all use a fresh dose of awe and wonder.  That is the premise of our new five-part worship series, called “reFresh:  Giving Your Faith a Fresh Start.”  We’ll begin with a sermon called “Meeting God Again for the First Time” based on Psalm 42, and together we’ll hear ways that we can move from “dogma to wonder,” from “belief to awe.”
 
This would be a great worship series for you to invite an unchurched friend or loved one to attend.  Come experience a faithlift, and may we all look forward to saying, “Today, awe returned.”
 
Grace and Peace,
 
Magrey