A Community of Wonder

"Once a  year, each Christmas, for a few days at least, we and millions of our neighbors turn aside from our preoccupations with life reduced to biology or economics or psychology and join together in a community of wonder."   (Eugene Peterson)


I read this quote at our Christmas Eve service.  It is found in a book of devotionals devoted to Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled,  God is in the Manger, pg 29.  The phrase, "community of wonder," captured my imagination.  We all need communities that strive to create a deep sense of wonder, awe, and mystery for us.

 To try to live without some sense of wonder is like living in a world devoid of color and contrast, a bland and tasteless world.  A world without wonder is a world that has lost the capacity for both joy and pain, celebration and grief, where laughter and groams are both silenced.

The surprise of wonder is that it infuses groans with joy and joy with groans.  I don't know how wonder happens like that....I just know that it does.

In this new year, may all our hearts be infused with a spirit of wonder!