The angel of God said, “What’s this? You ask for my name? You wouldn’t understand — it’s sheer wonder.” Judges 13:18 (MSG)
Sheer Wonder – The Wonder and Grace Series – Part 4
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
For Mary and Joseph, and for Manoah and his wife, the birth of their miraculous and promised children wasn’t the completion of a gift, it was the beginning. It didn’t close up their questions and experiences but opened them up more than ever.
If you know anything about Samson (Manoah and his wife’s son), you'll know he lived a crazy and full life. Full of heartache, angst, triumph, tragedy, sin, scandal, grace, violence, betrayal, humiliation, redemption, victory… he experienced so much.
An angel, who turned out to be God, promised his then childless parents, that they would have a baby boy who would deliver their people from Philistine oppression. Samson's birth would have been full of hope, joy, expectation, and excitement. But had they known what was ahead for them and their son, in the years after the promise was delivered, his parents may have been a little more somber and hesitant. The same goes for Mary and Joseph and all they went through being the parents of Jesus. Two promised children, two men destined to save their people, two sets of parents raising revolutionaries.
When the Angel of the Lord appeared again to Manoah and his wife after promising them Samson, Manoah asked him what his name was, and I love the response. He said, “You ask for my name? You wouldn’t understand—it’s sheer wonder.”
God didn’t explain himself in adjectives. He told the truth. He is too wonder-full to comprehend or understand. Not in an “everything is beautiful” way. ‘Wonderful’ in a real and inclusive way. The Sheer Wonder that is God doesn’t shrink back from tragedy. It doesn’t hide from heartache. It isn’t plastic and fluffy. It doesn’t shrug off tough questions or criticisms. It listens as we shake our fists to the heavens asking, “why?” It sees both the sun and the moon, the light and the dark. It dances with us when we’re rejoicing. It cries with us when we’re weeping. It doesn’t prefer one kind of person to another. It doesn’t need life to be clean, neat and understandable.
The wonder of God is that he can touch the entirety of our lives, and all the lives that the world contains, and all that pertains to them – each and every single one – with his love. We are all in fact a manifestation, an expression of divine love.
The wonder of God is not that he created Samson to be a superhuman man with strength like no other. No. Samson’s miracle wasn’t his supernatural strength. The wonder of God is that he was with Samson through it all.
So when we say, “holy is his name” or “his name is higher” or “he is wonder and majesty,” don’t let the words be a label, a descriptive box, a line that we say because it is the thing to say.
Let those words, his name (that is, as Manoah’s wife said, both terrifying and glorious) be an invitation to unite our lives – the good, bad, ugly and beautiful – to the divine mystery of his grace and love. And spend a lifetime trying to comprehend all that that means and is.
Tozer said that “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love.”
Go to Part 5 – Everyone is Included »
Written by Lizzy Milani
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