Wonderstruck

Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment.

The moon was the biggest I’d ever seen. It hovered in the sky right down the street from us, so close that it seemed God had lassoed it and pulled it near the earth. My older son squealed in excitement and ran to retrieve the wobbly, gray telescope his pappy had given him, his younger brother trailing close behind.

Smack-dab in the middle of the cul-de-sac, he set up an observation station to admire the moon lighting the night. My little boy’s palpable delight spread to my own heart as I watched him soak in God’s glory reflected by the glowing moon, up close and personal.

Wonderstruck: (1) an out-of-the-blue feeling of awe and wonder; (2) like being struck by lightning and surviving to tell the tale; (3) like a baby tasting buttercream-frosted cake for the first time when she’s only had rice cereal before; (4) like truly seeing, with eyes wide open, the astonishing provision of God when you’ve previously slotted everyday miracles as ordinary happenstance (see Psalm 92:5).

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I gazed in wonder at my computer screen, taking in the recently released images of the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.^a My first thought was, This can’t be real. My next thought was, How great is our God!

In these images of shimmering stars being born, it looked like glitter had been sprinkled across the night sky. I was literally starstruck.

We serve the same God who speaks and stars are born! What has taken humankind centuries to discover, God has been keeping in motion all along (see Genesis 1:1; Isaiah 40:26).

Anxiety often hits me hardest at night, when the sun goes down and the moon softly glows. I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s in the darkness that our minds tend to fixate on all the things that could go wrong. We lie in bed, hearts racing, tossing and turning, praying for sleep while shadows cover the room.

In moments like these, we need a larger vision, a wider view of God’s greatness. This is where Psalm 104 comes in, hushing our worried souls with reminders of God’s infinite power. God, who “made the moon to mark the seasons,” knows every thought in our minds, including the ones that wreak havoc on our hearts (see Psalm 104:19; 139:1-2). His glory spans the heavens, and his Word illuminates the paths before us, leading us from being worried to being wonderstruck (see Psalm 19:1; 119:105).

When we are lying in bed stricken by fear, stars are still being born above us. God is greater than our minds can comprehend, more powerful than we realize. A glimpse at the moon through a telescope or a careful study of images in the Carina Nebula doesn’t even compare to the one who created the night sky. But in these moments, our view of the greatness of God is enlarged. He lassoes us and pulls us close—and we are wonderstruck.

Word before World Awe enlarges our vision of God’s greatness.

Grow in Grace When was the last time you were wonderstruck by God’s greatness? If you can, go outside and look at the stars (or look up NASA’s images of stars online). What strikes you about God’s handiwork?