GodReflection: Power Words

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; – Psalms 95:6

I heard the story multiple times as a child of the New Mexico desert.

At first, a whirlwind seemed to rise from the hillside in the Chihuahuan Desert—no, it was a plume of bats—soon it morphed into wonder.

Jim White, a 16-year-old cowboy looking for stray cattle came upon the plume of bats boiling from the “biggest and blackest hole I had ever seen.” He began to explore Carlsbad Caverns a short time later and the wonder of an unseen underground world emerged before his homemade kerosene lantern.

Wonder is a word used to describe the inexplicable—like a cavern formation made over millions of years.

The Great Pyramid, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China, and the Ancient City Machu Picchu are marked with the “Great Wonders,” designation.

Wise and learned minds speculate plausible theories as to the creation of wonders of the world. Even these wonders trace their steps to God’s creation of gifted humankind.

There are greater wonders still.

I marvel that the Creation Song of Genesis chapter one does not speak in terms of wonders.  There is no greater display of the wonders of God.

Perhaps the answer is in the fact that God had no need to prove Himself to anyone during the creation.

Perfection was the state of reality. The fall would be a future event. Wonders are to create belief.

With the fall of humankind, there is a great challenge in the recorded history of Exodus and Deuteronomy.

God prepared to defend His Holiness before the skeptic King of Egypt, the children of Israel, and to a pagan world.

Wonders were in order.

Seventeen times in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy the word wonders describes God’s inexplicable miraculous acts.

No human theory could explain water transformed to blood, nor the other nine plagues that occurred on the Egyptian side of the boundary line.

I read the words of the Lord later in the story: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.” (Exodus 34:10)

Here is what I think.

I believe the wonders. Wonders are to invoke belief.

I serve the God of wonder who performs wonders.

So, I see wonders attached to the hip of God as a power word.

My God is neither definable nor explicable. He is neither finite nor limited. He is a God of mystery. He is a God of power. He is a God of wonder.

He is the God who presents me with the wonder of death, burial, and resurrection through His Son, Jesus.

He is the God who presents to me sin-cleansing blood.

He is the God who presents me with the wonder of a final resurrection and life forever in His presence on a new earth under a new heaven.

That makes wonder a powerful word in my vocabulary. It is a word that leads me to 24/7 worship of Creator God.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection on Wonder as a Word of Power.

Gary@GodReflection.org