Awe

A pregnant virgin. If ever there were a sign of all signs, here it was. I can hear the rumblings of
 the Israelites as Isaiah prophesied. His words were seven hundred years before 

God 

    came 

            down. 

Two thousand seven hundred years line up before this moment, this day, these words.
 And they are still uncomfortable to read. 
Look at those ancient words without the nativity in mind. "All right then, The Lord himself will give you the sign. LOOK! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means God is with us.)." 

Does it sound bizarre? It should. It is a sign from the Lord HIMSELF. It should be a showstopper. God meant it to be. This was no secret birth, no private hidden away moment. He meant it to cause wonder, to make people shake their heads,  to bring the room to quiet. 

God is about awe. He is about wonder. He does His outrageous work in ways that make the wise cackle at the absurdity. ” I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” 

If the nativity sounds unbelievable to you, it's okay. It was meant to be astonishing. It also means God did exactly what He set out to do. He set out to create a story that could not depend on human wisdom. The ways of God are unlike ours. He outdoes our wildest imagination. He doesn't stick with our systems and strategies. He remains outside of us and yet very near us. As tempting as it is to wrap the nativity up into a snow globe and tell it pretty, tell it in a digestible way, pretend that it makes sense.... don’t. Please don't. In doing so, we miss the whole point of our powerful God's sign. He does not expect us to turn off our thinking and pretend His outrageous plan is normal. No indeed, instead, may we revel in the overwhelming, excessive lengths He went through to impress us with this SIGN. 

Sometimes, the only response to God’s unbelievable solutions is to fall on your face and be amazed. Believers, we do not have to NOR COULD WE EVER PROPERLY explain our God's ways. 

Eight years on the mission field taught me AWE. Without asking for funding, we would receive what we needed to the dollar amount. We would receive it from people who didn't even know of our need. Many times over, we received. 

A fire started on a windy night, burned down the fence that was within feet of our community center. Feet. And yet, the community center, sitting vulnerable in the direction of the wind, did not catch fire. 

Mongolian government officials randomly changed their minds about forcing our nonprofit to pay back taxes (that we did not owe). Thousands of dollars (that we did not have.)" or else…" Troy cried out in prayer while the rest of us pulled our hair out, and they called back to say, "Never mind…" 

God started a church in an unreached community using a carpenter and a soccer mom.
There are so many other, overqualified humans who could have done that.


But God, God awes.


Take comfort in that. Receive comfort in His greatness, comfort in His ability, comfort in His desire to awe you today.