It Just Makes You Wonder!
This version of this week's "Front-Porch Gospel" is the one we sent in to the Ellis County Press, where we also have run our "Crossing The Georgia Line" (The Story of the Summer of '73" novel/memoir.) We haven't posted that work yet here on the website but will look to do that if you think you'd like to read it as we go along. Mention it, if you like. It is now 40+ chapters. I mention all of that for you, perhaps, to look forward to that story and also to introduce the theme of 'WONDER.' That summer, as much as anything I've seen, makes me truly wonder about God's greatness and His Providence in our lives.. I suppose every column we write and every story we tell somehow fits into this category.
You understand.
Hope you enjoy this week's five minutes ... out on the 'front porch.' ~ Coach
Even when we step away for a day from our "Life begins in 1973" journey with all the intrigue and wonder in it, we never get very far away from the great wonders of life that come along every day, around every corner, even in a late-night visit to our study . Read on, you'll see.
The day was almost over one evening last week. The amazin' blonde and I had called it a night, and she retired to the room while I stayed up a little later. I knew that the next day was a study day, so, when the house was quiet, I eased into my study – the ‘presidential library’ we call it, with a wall-to-wall bookshelf with more knowledge on those shelves than a man could absorb in a lifetime – and I skimmed a moment over that vast ocean of books.
I noticed a book down two shelves from the bottom, one at which I had never looked. I pulled it out and noticed that it was slightly tattered -- and old, both in the sense of when it actually was published and even more so when the writer penned the words and gifted the world with its message.
It was a book of sermons and essays by John Ker, a Scottish preacher who was born in 1819 and lived most of the rest of the decade. I have long loved both old writers and old sermons and writings from the nineteenth century. I have discovered after years of sailing through that sea of books in my library that the writers of that era have a deeper way to look at old truths, and they have an uncanny ability to weave the miracle of words into sentences and paragraphs that results in true masterpieces of language and thought.
The best writers are not the ones who look for new doctrines or new and better methods of theology. No, the best ones are those who delve into the scriptures and take old truths and express them in a way that you walk away feeling almost as if you have sailed the ocean and explored the stars in their explanation. Such an effect is why Shakespeare became Shakespeare, and Samuel Clemens, the riverboat pilot became Mark Twain, the prolific novelist.
When you are finished reading the best of such writers, those writers have poured into your mind – almost without your knowing it – new perspectives, deeper understandings, a clearer and comprehensive look at their subject (in this case, the Word of God), along with an amazing experience in the power of thought.
It is truly an experience.
A writer today may take a simple thought and make it complicated and, often, hover on ‘borderline’ truth. They will make it difficult to decipher truth from falsehood, and they leave you walking away wondering, but it is a ‘wondering’ that is in the wrong way.
But a great writer can take a complex thought and make it simple, and he can take a simple thought and show its complexity in varied ways that, in the end, leave you with a sense of profound wonder. It is like looking at a rainbow – very simple, yet complex, its beauty transcending the power of words.
You nor I could ever put words on a page, or speak words, that would even begin to describe the beauty of a rainbow. Why, it would be silly even to try. A rainbow, you see, enters into the realm of the unexplainable, the inexplicable, the unfathomable. I guess it's appropriate that we just used three of the biggest words we've ever used back-to-back-to-back in trying to express something, but that just shows where you are when you try to describe the rainbow, the Grand Canyon, or the Lord. Words fail.
I think a rainbow may be the best example of what, say, true faith looks like. You cannot touch faith, cannot hold it in your hand, cannot explain just how it transforms your life or motivates everything you do or say – but you know its beauty because you experience its power.
You understand.
The only way to experience a rainbow is to look up in the sky and admire its arch stretching almost from sea to sea.
Standing there in the library that evening, the house quiet and clock nearing midnight, I flipped through the book and came upon a sermon by Mr. Ker, called, “Man’s Sense of Wonder.”
I stopped flipping there, and I noted the scripture he had undertaken to discuss. Psalm 119:18:
“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”
Easing over to my desk, I kept reading and began to investigate the thoughts from the old scribe’s pen – the scribe being both the eighteen-hundreds writer and the inspired scribe from a thousand years before Christ. The further I read along – soon with a red pen in hand, underlining as I went – the more I ‘wondered’ about the power in the Word of God. One glimpse of the combination of both writers will help prove our point here and give us things upon which to meditate until we come to this place again. Ker writes,
“The Bible exhorts us to consider ‘the wondrous works of God,’ and to talk of them all. It (is) a fitting exercise not only in this world, but in another. As knowledge rises, wonder does not become less, and those who stand on ‘the sea of glass mingled with fire,’ sing, ‘Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty …”
“As knowledge rises” the wonder in our minds rise, too. What a great thought! The more we learn the more we realize how much we do not know, and the more we wonder.
Taking those words in carefully, allowing both Ker and the psalmist to pour concepts of truth and the power of words into my mind, I could not help but think: Yes, it’s true, studying God's Word really is a little like looking up at a rainbow. I’m not sure I know how to say it, except to say this:
It all just makes you wonder. ~ Coach 5-6-24
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