This Week in Church: Wonder and the incarnation

Welcome to the series wherein I share my take-aways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.

I think that church can teach things that are beneficial to everyone, whether or not we believe in church-related things.

This week in church we talked about wonder.

"God is not so much the object of our knowledge, but the cause of our wonder."
-Kallistos Ware

What a great definition for God: that which causes wonder. There is so much to wonder at. Wonder at the notion of pure love. Wonder at the act of creation. Wonder about existence.

Perhaps wonder is somewhere near the heart of the spiritual experience. Maybe instead of seeking happiness or fulfillment or other such things, we should seek out wonder, in both meanings of the term: wonder as in "awe" and wonder as in "hmmmmm, what happens if I do this?"

Both might bring us all closer to something meaningful. That seems interesting.

This week in church we talked about the incarnation.

The quote was shared in the light of the incarnation, which is the whole idea of Jesus being God, embodied as an actual human. Whether or not you believe that happened, it's kind of a wondrous thing to consider: "Imagine for a minute that there is a god, and that god wanted to know what it was like to be a human. So it took a part of itself, stripped it of its godly powers, and made it into a complete human. What torture: to have all the knowledge of a god, but no power. To be helpless. To experience and witness pain, loneliness, heartbreak, joy, and the stiltedness of human love, and to be able to do nothing but live through it."

What a weird thing to consider. I don't know what it means, but it is something to think about.

(Full disclosure: I got to church suuuuper late this week, so I missed all the context. For all I know, this is nothing like what the pastor was going for in sharing this message.)




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