The Wonder of It All

When her mother came to pick her up one day at the close of that morning’s Vacation Bible School, she took Mommy’s hand and led her into the big meeting room. With wide eyes and a quiet kind of awe in her four-year-old voice, she said “This is where the music is.”

Then she escorted Mommy all around the room. There was the puppet stage where Nick and Cooper, Stan and Alex helped us learn what love is. Then there were the props and plants, along with the big umbrella, the hammock and the grill, that comprised our attempt to turn the sanctuary into “God’s big backyard.”

“Look, Mommy!” she said, as she pointed at each picture or prop.

“Look!”

And, though she wasn’t speaking to me, I too began to look. And to see.

During much of our preparation for Vacation Bible School, I could think of little else except how much work our volunteers were putting in. But then, as the third day of our week-long adventure drew to a close, God gave me a glimpse of the whole endeavor through the eyes of a four-year-old. Suddenly, the wonder was there, as it should have been all along.

The wonder is not simply that a group of busy adults would spend more than a hundred hours decorating a church building for a VBS program. The wonder is not only that many of them worked for weeks preparing crafts, lessons and Bible stories to tell the children. The wonder is not merely in the work of baking hundreds of cookies and sandwiches for Friday’s lunch and program, nor only in the uncounted sacrifices made by so many to make Vacation Bible School as successful as possible. Amazingly, this kind of supreme effort commonly takes place, in churches throughout this community, many times over every summer.

But the greatest wonder is not in the effort or the program.

The wonder is what lies behind all the work: hearts touched by God, full of His love, and gripped by a passion to share His love and let the little children come to Him, no matter how much work it takes.

The height and depth and length and breadth of the wonder is in the outpoured love of God seen in His Son dying on the cross for wide-eyed four-year-olds and weary middle-aged pastors alike. The wonder is the fact that He loved His rebellious creation so much that He came and lived among the rebels themselves, and took the just punishment for their rebellion upon Himself. That, indeed, is the greatest wonder there is.

I remember that when I was just a little child myself, my dad often sang these words made famous by George Beverly Shea. “Oh, the wonder of it all! The wonder of it all! Just to think that God loves me!”

Indeed.

Just think of it, that wonder-full love of His! Then, like a little child, come to Jesus again, and thank Him for how much He loves you. It’s a wonder!