The Wonder of the Cross

"May I never lose the wonder
The wonder of the cross
May I see it like the first time
Standing as a sinner lost
Undone by mercy and left speechless
Watching wide eyed at the cost
May I never lose the wonder
The wonder of the cross"

These lyrics are sung with great passion by Vicky Beeching (You Tube of the song) in her song, "The Wonder of the Cross". This is my prayer for today. I have been finding it increasingly more difficult to personally understand joy, wonder, and amazement. I mean, don't get me wrong - my passion for Jesus has not wavered... I will ALWAYS worship Him, just as He deserves and my heart desires.

I just find myself too often keeping my "nose to the grindstone". As you might be able to tell from our myriad of posts over the past 12 months, we keep unraveling a mystery here... but it's not so much the mystery of faith so much as it has been peeling off the layers of sin, deceit, lies, pain, grief, and misery that we can so easily find around us. As much as I was prepared for seeing the amount of loss that haunts our Namibian neighbors, I was not prepared for its affect on my own heart. I think I've gotten a whiff of the numbness that others use to cope with their hopeless worldview.

No surprise, right? I think I've allowed my heart to absorb the environment a bit, and have become vulnerable to the weaknesses of humanity.

I have been sitting here thinking about this. Have I allowed the world to change me more than I've changed it? That would worry me.

Then I realize that I have begun to carry the cross in a way that I have truly never done before. ("Whoever does not carry his own cross ¹ and follow ² me cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:27 ) Lose enough blood, and you WILL go numb.

And as a sinner, who has bled out and found life only in Jesus' blood, I can honestly say that I am "undone by mercy and left speechless". I am renewed this morning by a kind of Wonder that I did not expect. It's not the emotionalism of events and temporal outcomes. It's the complete joy in Christ that only comes when you appreciate the cost of His sacrifice. May I never lose that wonder, that joy, that humble acknowledgment of my absolute and dire need for Him.

-Steve