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Being Ever-Surprised by Jesus

I love those moments when I learn something new from God’s word, some piece of knowledge that catches me by surprise. When you unexpectedly gain a new perspective, see a familiar passage in a fresh light or simply experience a renewed sense of wonder from a passage you’ve read hundreds of times, it fills you with excitement and joy. But seldom would we describe such experiences with words like astonishment, wonder, marvel. We reserve these words for those extremely rare moments of discovery that seem to happen less and less as you grow older. Such responses take us back perhaps to an earlier, younger time of our Christian walk, when our faith was new and our knowledge about Jesus and the word very limited. But as you grow older in the faith, having heard and read the stories of the Bible over and over, those feelings become increasingly rare (at least for some of us). There’s even a danger of becoming blasé or nonchalant about our faith. Perhaps this is also why Paul admonishes us to renew our minds (Rom 12.2). We ought to continually look at the gospel with a sense of renewal that might cause us to be surprised or even astonished.

When Jesus walked this earth, he constantly surprised and amazed the people, causing them to be astonished, to marvel, to wonder, to be awe-struck. From the events surrounding his birth (Lk 2.18,33), to his many miracles (Mt 8.27; 9.33), to his unexplainable wisdom (Mt 7.28; 22.22; Jn 7.15), to the graciousness of his words (Lk 4.22), to his forgiving their sins (Mt 9.6; Lk 5.26), to his breaking of their human traditions (Lk 11.38) and social customs (Jn 4.27), to his unwillingness to defend himself against blatantly false charges (Mt 27.14), to the manner of his death (Mk 15.44; Mt 27.54), to the emptiness of the tomb (Mk 16.18;Lk 24.12) to the appearance of him alive again (Lk 24.41) – Jesus constantly called forth expressions of great surprise and astonishment among the people. But that should not surprise us, for when God comes into the world what else would one expect other than the totally unexpected? We ought to expect to be astonished -- if that’s not self-contradictory – even by the things we have become utterly familiar with.

The “old, old story” of Jesus, no matter how familiar, continues to hold its power to astonish. I pray that I will never lose that sense of wonder and surprise about Jesus. Let us continually marvel at the great power of God that Jesus displayed. Let us be amazed at such wisdom in his words and let us be deeply moved at the grace and love he displayed. Let us stand in awe of his willingness to submit to the humiliation and suffering of the cross. Most of all, let us never cease to be astonished that Jesus would be so gracious that he would die for sinners like you and me. Few things ought to astonish and surprise us more than that, except perhaps the fact that the gospel message never loses its power to surprise and astonish us.