A few months ago I mentioned something about wonder, and how we need more of it in our lives generally, and in our reading of scripture, books, or in our “reading” of anything, really. A couple more thingies on wonder, then…
First, from Eugene Peterson’s Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life, a really great quote
Taken out of the context of resurrection wonder, any prayer soon becomes an act of idolatry–reducing God to what we can use for our purposes, however noble and useful.
Now, I’m familiar with the rebuke about turning God into a candy machine and the idolatry involved therein. But I had never thought of it in terms of a lack of wonder. That is, wonder is the only approach to God that doesn’t use him. Rather, as Peterson goes on to insist, wonder puts us where we can begin to live and work in such a way that is consonant with the new creation inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection, and inaugurated existentially and personally for us in our being raised with him to newness of life. Wonder, then, is the only countenance appropriate to living life coram Deo, before the face of God.
Note the Bynum quote that is the tagline for this blog. Throw in the resurrection, and it’s truer than I think she even realized.
