In Which We Remember the Feel of Fur

    When Lucy first enters the wardrobe there is a line that stood out to me so distinctly that it may as well have glowed.  

    “Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up-mostly long fur coats.  There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur.”

God reaches out to us and draws us in many ways.  Eventually, we come to the point where we realize that our sins are so deep and we are so deserving of punishment for them that we fall to our knees weeping, in mourning.  For the vast majority of us, this isn’t the first inkling that He is out there, somewhere; that there is something greater, far greater, so great that it is beyond us.  The first kindling of a passion towards God lies often in wonder, delight, and joy; in the very things we could say we, “Like nothing so much as”.  

The entire human race is easily staggered by wonder in the natural world.  Whether it is a sunset, a bright necklace of stars shining in the night sky, a humpback whale breaching the surface to fly through the air for a moment, or the tiny wonder of engineering that is an insect’s leg or wing,  we are given to pause and marvel.  We can’t help but utter an astonished, “Wow” and realize that something truly amazing is at work.  All around us the great vastness or the minute intricacies cause us a surprisingly equal amount of astonishment and inspires us to question the reality we have been subscribing to.

We are given to great delight and joy at the birth of a child,and outright cheering for their first steps.  We watch them discover the world around them and we remember the feel of fur; drinking from the hose, climbing a tree, wading in creeks and feel the urge to join them.  The smart ones among us actually do.  Play and discovery and wonder are so integral to the human experience that I can’t imagine our Creator not being playful Himself.  

When God called Abraham, He called him throughthe wonder of the night sky.   When God called Moses He drew him to wonder by the Burning Bush.  When God announced the birth of Jesus He wasn’t subtle about it.  A host of angels appeared giving a group of shepherds the fright of their life, but also an indelible memory and a sense of joy and wonder that I am certain was a holy touchstone throughout the rest of their days.  Adam himself must have been in a constant state of wonder during his time in the garden, not least of all when he woke up and found a rib gone and the most beautiful, most naked woman in front of him hand-fashioned by the God who created all things.  

None of these experiences could have been manufactured by human hands, just like the feel of fur.  Regardless of the making of that fur into a coat, the quality of the feel of the fur was not made by man and can’t be truly replicated by synthetic processes. It delights us.  We touch fur and can’t believe anything could be so soft, so delightful, so warm.  In the same way, the loving, comforting, accepting embrace of a grandmother covers us in a warmth that is produced because of her but not by her.  These experiences spark amazement and inspire us to ask, “How?”

It’s that question of how that draws us into the Wardrobe and into a realm where, quite literally, the wonders never cease.  

I’ve met quite a few pastors in my day but the ones I knew who had the greatest impact on me were those that always had a look in their eyes and a smile slightly tugging at the corners of their lips that seemed to always be implying their unspoken thought was, “I wonder what the LORD is going to do next.”  I.  Wonder.  Independent of the thing actually really happening, they lived in wonder; they lived expecting the next impossible thing that the LORD would do.  

I wish I could say those pastors outweighed the anxious pastors, the angry pastors, the legalistic pastors.  I wish I could say that the lay believers I’ve met that lived in wonder outweighed believers I’ve met in the less savory categories.  And I wish I could say I was that kind of a wonder filled believer and not often guilty of being the other kind.

The challenge to us in all things related to Jesus is the simple calling, the great dare of God, “Taste, and see.”  Psalm 37:4 gives us the promise, “Delight yourselves in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  We are meant to find in Him delight, and joy, and happiness, and wonder.  In Mark 9:15, after the Transfiguration of Jesus, the three disciples He took with him descend the mountain and a crowd swarms Him, “…overwhelmed by wonder…”  

It can seem that Jesus’ stock and trade was in wonder and amazement upon the earth.  It was not just the signs and miracles.  Some of the greatest wonders especially for the intellectuals of his day, the Sadducees, Scribes, and Pharisees, was the authority of His teaching, the revelations of true scriptural interpretation, and His declarations of being the Messiah.  These things went against their established paradigm and called them out for not being even nearly as holy as they believed and many reacted negatively.  Others, like Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can this be?”  How.  Wonder.  

Even after His death, burial, and resurrection Jesus continued to cause wonder to spring up within people.  My favorite instance is when He meets some of His followers along the road to Emmaus.  He discusses the events of the Passion with them, clouding their ability to see Him for who He was.  He explains all, eats dinner with them and disappears after a moment of revealing Himself to them.  Their response is one of my favorites.  “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”  

The signature of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit is wonder.  It is the feeling we would normally associate as “magic” though without the trick, without the manufactured cause, and without the hangover of disillusionment that somehow makes the world darker.

I believe we are called to live in that delight, wonder, and joy.  And with an all-sufficient, all-powerful, ever-present, and abounding in steadfast love God that He is it, is easier than we may think.  Many of us live expecting that He has just tricked us, that there is no magic to what He has done, and go very cynical.  That used to be me.  Others want it to be true but have been so disappointed by life in general that they douse it quickly believing the wonder was for just a short time and not to be expected.  But others…others taste and see.  Astoundingly few believers  reach up and wrap themselves up in the fur coat, and walk through the wardrobe to where the magic runs wild around us and through us changing us with delight after delight, joy after joy, and wonder after wonder.

Taste and see that the LORD is…not just fine, not just nice, not just better than all other options, not just a necessity. 

Taste and see that the LORD is good.