FAITH: From familiar to fascinated

”And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat and walked out through the stunned onlookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, “We’ve never seen anything like this before!” – Mark 2:12

There is an app called Lectio 365, which helps users engage in a version of the practice of Lectio Divina. I use the app on a pretty regular basis, and the current series they are going through begins with a prayer that has nestled its way into my soul. Each day they pray, “Move my heart from familiar to fascinated.”

Humans get excited for newness. We love Christmas and birthdays because we often receive gifts; every child loves new things to play with. When we first meet our significant other, we’re usually curious about them and every conversation feels like a new discovery about the person you are learning to love. You move, and there are new coffee shops to visit, new places to explore. You have to decide which grocery store you will frequent. When you have a baby, everything about them is new – their smile, their toes, their laugh. They learn to eat and stand and walk. Life is plentiful with new and exciting experiences.

There was a point in time when you met Christ. A moment you first heard and comprehended the story of the cross and grace. Jesus was new to you then. Maybe, you can reflect and remember the feelings that came with the newness of that story – hope, peace, elation, excitement, joy. There might have been many other feelings for you. And maybe those feelings continued for a while as you read stories of Jesus for the first time or at least comprehended them in a heartfelt way for the first time. Following after Jesus, learning the way of Christ, understanding God’s plan and design – it was all new.

But then ... time happened. You grew familiar with the passages of scripture talked about and studied; you maybe even memorized them. You heard about the paralyzed man a thousand times. You heard about the women at the well again and again. And you heard about the cross time after time after time. You didn’t mean for those stories and the life you’ve chosen to begin to feel routine and ordinary, but you can’t help it. Something you live and practice every day will always begin to feel ordinary at a certain point.

I sometimes wonder if the wonder disappeared a little bit for the disciples after a while. Three years is a long time. Maybe, a leper healed felt very different 100 lepers later. Maybe, the first blind person was a surprise, and the others began to feel routine in some ways. Maybe, the feeding of the thousands was expected the second time. Maybe walking the long dusty roads and doing laundry in the rivers and laughing after fishing made the whole thing begin to feel pretty ordinary. Maybe, the face of Christ was gazed upon enough times that they got annoyed with him and frustrated by him.

When you read the stories, it all begins to feel very familiar after a while. The cast of characters, the human responses, the brokenness and desperation. And there’s all the ordinariness written in between the lines. We can get used to following Jesus. We can become dull to the wonder that first existed. We can even become numb to the cross if we let ourselves.

I spend a lot of time at Young Life camps in the summer. This summer will be my eighth summer going to camp with students. Young Life camp experiences begin to feel routine after a while. Though you might deeply love students and want them to commit to Jesus and experience His love, you build up a tolerance to the Lord and what He is up to if you’re not careful. The new thing for one kid can be the same story from the kid last year if you’re feeling jaded or burned out.

The prayer from Lectio 365 has become my daily prayer this summer: “Move my heart from familiar to fascinated.” It brings to mind the end of the passage where the paralyzed man who is brought to Jesus by four other men is healed. It says that all the people watching are amazed and they say aloud that they’ve never seen anything like it before. I wonder, were the disciples saying that, too? Were they able to humble themselves and tap into the wonder of that one man’s story: the four guys who carried him, the desperation to get at Jesus?

That is what I want to be able to do in my Christian life. I want to see every conversion, every experience of Christ’s love, every miracle, with the same wonder that I first felt at the cross. I know that God is bigger than monotony, and oh, that I might be as well – that I might grow to enjoy the ordinary, the rote, the again and again and again, that I might be fascinated by the familiar, for that is the gift of God, that all would be made new, that miracles would be familiar to us, that we might expect the extraordinary.

My friends, would you pray and seek to be awed with me this summer? Let us find fascination in our walk with Jesus.