No better worship than wonder

Last week, my husband and I took the second of what we hope becomes an annual trip to a beautiful mountain cabin. It’s a glorious retreat, with a breath-taking view off the balcony that I spent as many minutes possible soaking up.

The cabin even has it’s own library. When you walk through the french doors, there are two walls covered in books from floor to ceiling. Last year, on our first visit, I spent a few minutes browsing the titles, looking for anything that seemed intriguing. My eyes fell on the spine of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I had been meaning to read the book for years and had heard nothing but good things from everyone who had read it. Now was the perfect time. I just needed to finish it in a few days, as I couldn’t take it with me.

It proved not to be a problem. It was as good as everyone said. I devoured it in about three days, reading most of it in the sunshine on the porch, taking in the glorious view. When we were returning to the same cabin this year, I decided I wanted to re-read the book. I devoured the book for a second time.

One of the last chapters is entitled Worship, The Mystical Wonder. I knew that if I read no other chapter, I needed to be sure to read that one. Since starting this blog, I’ve been curious to look into other people’s insights into worship.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t revolve around musical worship. It spoke of worship in the sense of being in awe of God. How this whole Christian belief rises above reason and can’t be explained. How God is so much greater than we can begin to comprehend and understand. How the author takes great comfort in that, because the thing that created us needs to be greater than us, greater than we can wrap our minds around.

I don’t know if I ever thought of worship in that way, but it makes sense.

Jesus and reason don’t mix well. I have a couple of friends that are struggling with that, wondering how they can in good conscience believe this thing that is so completely insane, that honestly cannot stand up to reason. I have days like that. Where I look up at the ceiling and wonder if my words are really making it past the ceiling fan. Days where there is no way I can tell others about Jesus, because the whole thing is just ridiculous. How can I convince someone to believe this thing that I’m not always so sure about myself?

But then I look at something like my mountain view from last week (I call it mine because I really wanted to pack it up and take it home with me) and I wonder how I could ever doubt. Sure, this doesn’t make sense, but that’s part of what faith is all about. Choosing to believe in the midst of all the crazy.

And that’s when we worship. When we choose to set aside all our reason and boxed in answers and say, “God, You are real. And awesome.”

Here is what I’ve started thinking. All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship…

At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.”

Donald Miller