 |
| St. Hildegard of Bingen by Nicholas Frizalone |
"All of creation
is a song of praise to God."
|
The mission of Emmaus City Church is to be united with Jesus as He shares and shows His Gospel in, with, and for Worcester, MA. "As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus Himself suddenly came and began walking with them.” + Luke 24:15
Showing posts with label Wonder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wonder. Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Holy Awe & Wonder | St. Hildegard of Bingen, "Life is Majestic"
"All of creation
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
April Fool's Day | How We Can & Should Be "Mad as a Hatter"
The world says get
and Jesus says give.
+ The Faces of Jesus
+ The Faces of Jesus
As we enjoy this April Fool's Day, and wonder again if there is a love that "consumes nothing good but everything evil," I continue to hear Alice in Wonderland's refrain, " ... curiouser and curiouser ... "
And I'm brought back to this foolishly wise quote by the late pastor and author, Frederick Buechner, who invites me to wonder like Alice again, and Tom Holland, agnostic historian and author, who encourages Christians to be honest about the mad things they believe in and encourages people to understand the air we breathe:
If the world is sane,
then Jesus is mad as a hatter
and the Last Supper
then Jesus is mad as a hatter
and the Last Supper
is the Mad Tea Party.
The world says,
Mind your own business,
and Jesus says,
There is no such thing
The world says,
Mind your own business,
and Jesus says,
There is no such thing
as your own business.
The world says,
Follow the wisest course
The world says,
Follow the wisest course
and be a success,
and Jesus says,
Follow me and be crucified.
The world says, Drive carefully
—the life you save may be your own—
and Jesus says,
"Whoever would save his life
and Jesus says,
Follow me and be crucified.
The world says, Drive carefully
—the life you save may be your own—
and Jesus says,
"Whoever would save his life
will lose it, and
whoever loses his life for My sake
whoever loses his life for My sake
will find it."
The world says,
Law and order,
and Jesus says,
Love.
The world says,
Get
and Jesus says,
Give.
In terms of the world's sanity,
Jesus is crazy as a coot,
and anybody who thinks he or she
The world says,
Law and order,
and Jesus says,
Love.
The world says,
Get
and Jesus says,
Give.
In terms of the world's sanity,
Jesus is crazy as a coot,
and anybody who thinks he or she
can follow Him
without being a little crazy too
is laboring less under a cross
than under a delusion.
without being a little crazy too
is laboring less under a cross
than under a delusion.
+ Frederick Buechner,
The Faces of Jesus
"Under a Delusion"
"Under a Delusion"
Rather than speaking
with the voice of prophecy,
rather than explaining
to a grieving and anxious people
how the dead will rise
into the blaze of eternal life,
rather than proclaiming
the miracles and mysteries
that they uniquely exist to proclaim,
(too many) Church leaders
with the voice of prophecy,
rather than explaining
to a grieving and anxious people
how the dead will rise
into the blaze of eternal life,
rather than proclaiming
the miracles and mysteries
that they uniquely exist to proclaim,
(too many) Church leaders
seem to have opted instead
to talk like middle managers.
...
The future for local churches
is to remind people
where these ideas come from.
They come from believing in mad things,
that there is a God
who created all human beings equally,
gave them an inherent dignity
because they’re created in God’s image.
...
People want the supernatural.
is to remind people
where these ideas come from.
They come from believing in mad things,
that there is a God
who created all human beings equally,
gave them an inherent dignity
because they’re created in God’s image.
...
People want the supernatural.
+ Tom Holland
Historian, Author and Agnostic
Bonus Posts:
+ Living and Loving Curiously w/ Wonder
+ Living and Loving Curiously w/ Wonder
May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
With anticipation and joy,
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
New Year Beholding | The Art of Other Seeing: God & Humans
Beholding others is about approaching people as we do God, as a mystery to discover and enjoy rather than to sense-make and control. + Strahan Coleman
Beholding by Strahan Coleman continues to be a wonder-filled book I have been overjoyed to return to at the beginning of 2025 and 2026.
"Beholding" has recently been a theme in my life that I think Jesus continues to invite me back to. Why?
This posture as a way of life not only invites me to welcome and witness what God and others are doing in my life, but in response, beholding helps me to worship God as the Creator and Sustainer who I get to thank for all that is in my life.
For more on what beholding is like, here are a few excerpts from Coleman's Beholding.
The Art of Others Seeing
"When I first saw God,
I went a kind of blind.
Now all I see is Heaven
in the eyes of
enemy and friend alike."
Prayer Vol. 01
When we look at humanity
through the artist eyes of God,
we see little miracles in everyone we meet
— even our enemies.
The Church becomes a kind of artistic,
anthropological priesthood,
documenting and celebrating
every little detail of our differences.
As an opportunity to find God,
being hospitable to another person,
to any other person at all,
becomes an act of Christ-embrace.
Seeing Those We Don't Understand
Knowing the fundamental goodness about God means we can be with Him whilst we grow in our understanding. God's goodness is what our relationship is based on. Beholding others is simply our treating others with that same dignity.
If our gospel is sin obsessed, it reduces our story with God to that of forgiveness only, and we're likely to take the sin-central view of life to those around us. Sin will be the first thing we see, and we're confronted with people who touch the nerve of our particular sin horror, we will struggle to see their image. We'll only see their brokenness as the main event of their existence. If our gospel is one of reconciliation, if it begins before the fall in Genesis with God's face-to-faceness with us, then we're more likely to see that essential good in someone first and prioritize their rediscovering friendship with their Father over moral correction. We'll see their image, their imago Dei.
 |
| Christ w/ the Canaanite Woman & Her Daughter by H.O. Tanner, 1909 A.D. |
The women at the well in Samaria in John 4 is a beautiful example of this. Jesus was confronted with a woman who had had many husbands and was not married to the man she was presently with. One divorce alone would have had a powerful negative connotation for this woman, and being in her current relationship would have socially marked her further. It would have been all that many would have seen first when they spoke to her. But not Jesus.
Jesus beheld her.
He asked for her water, drawing her into a deeply spiritual conversation, one that He didn't dive into with the all-together religious leaders back in Jerusalem.
Jesus saw something else.
He saw deeper than this woman's mistakes. He saw someone longing for God with the capacity to be a great evangelist. When he relationships did come up, Jesus didn't lecture her on sexual ethics.
He continued to invite her
into the story of God.
And she did become an evangelist. So much so that Jesus stayed for days in the town where she lived as she drew many others out to hear Him.
Jesus did this kind of thing all the time.
He saw the beauty in others
louder than their shortfalls.
To transcend others' shortfalls
and love like Jesus,
we need to become beholders.
It's not an either-or, of course, because one can't be fully reconciled without a transformation of the behaviors that bring relational brokenness.
But repentance was often a response
to Jesus' profound love and grace
toward someone.
It matters that we choose to see someone's God-image before their sin. People are more than their brokenness. When we see others through their God-image first, over and above what we can make sense of in the interim, we can love and behold them, because no matter how they act — engaging us, confusing us, or challenging us — we know that as surely as God is good, His good image is placed within that person and we can find common ground.
Practically, this means when we're talking with those we disagree with, no matter how our arguments end, we never denigrate the dignity or fundamental goodness of one another. Even our enemies. Even our political opponents. It means that when we see another at our borders, challenging our cultural norms, holding vastly different political views, asking more of our financial social situations than we think we can give, we're seeing God and the opportunity to meet and care for Him (see Matthew 25:34-40).
Beholding others
doesn't mean resigning
to their shortcomings
or becoming indifferent,
but it does mean that
on the long journey
toward healing and reconciliation,
we can sit with each other and
see each other with beauty and love.
Love will always long for healing wherever it sees brokenness, and full reconciliation isn't possible without the healing of the brokenness within us.
Becoming Godly Listeners
If we walk with God for long enough, we'll experience seasons of dryness and quiet. Times when all our prayer, tears, longing, and searching will feel like they're turning up nothing. These seasons deeply challenge our assumptions that we can always feel, sense, or hear God when He's there, and we're forced to walk the faith journey in what feels like complete blindness.
It's often in these seasons that beholding prayer becomes a lifeline for our spiritual walk. Here, we're coerced to either behold God for who He says He is or deny Him altogether as we find we don't have the energy, faith, or mind space to wrestle with the questions anymore. Beholding prayer becomes a way of acknowledging that somehow God is sitting with us in the dust of it, strangely available, closer than our skin.
because like the psalmist's,
our prayer finally becomes honest and raw.
though they rarely feel like it
in the moment.
Through them we learn
the silent companionship of God
in our suffering.
Over time we learn to look back and see that He was with us in awareness and acceptance even when we couldn't feel or see it in the moment. He wasn't withholding His love or presence from us by not giving us the answers or healing we wanted; He was demonstrating the audacity of His love to sit with us in our pain without giving them. He was just there with us in our grief much like He was whilst walking with Mary on the way to Lazarus' tomb. In our darkest moments, we were being beheld by God.
For the one who has beheld and been beheld by God through their own dark nights, allowing people to vent their honest anger and rail away at others and God is an act of genuine strength and compassion. They're able to let others fully be, as God once let them be.
I like to imagine a world
in which the Church can become
God's ears to the world.
Listening with this kind of grace,
sitting with others in their darkness,
teaching them how to be
in the tension of pain and
Today, as a whole world of people feel despair and depression at historic levels, maybe God longs to fashion a priesthood of believers who know how to sit in the darkness alongside them with enduring love, even when it feels helpless. We've been really good at talking, sometimes talking at people, for a long time. What if it's time to learn to listen as a form of witness?
What if deep listening
is a way of healing the world,
revealing God to it?
In this way,
for our times,
helping others to make sense
of their pain, suffering,
loneliness, confusion,
success, and blessings
As we behold and love
in these ways,
that love engulfs people into
the kind of relationship with us
that God longs to have
with the world.
It shows them a little more
of what God is like.
We're the closest thing to God
for many on this earth;
we're Christ's body.
So when we love
the image of God in others
and sit with them
in a beholding manner,
we give them a sample
of the magnificent
and all-engulfing
love of God, too.
Not all of us are called to the vocation of the evangelist, but the universal calling of every follower of Jesus is that of being witnesses to what we have seen and touched and of those who have been seen and heard by God. Beholding invites us to be witnesses through our attentive and compassionate listening, as well as through our storytelling and sharing.
It's important to note that this doesn't mean we should keep our mouths closed about important issues in the fear that we may offend people or that it may cause them to feel less seen. That's another extreme, and it's not even the best way to love someone. But love changes our volume, our temperament, the words we use, and the place we challenge from. Reconciling love changes our tone. It makes us, hopefully, slower to speak ... speak from beside rather than across from others.
+ Strahan Coleman
in Beholding,
"The Art of Other Seeing,"
pgs. 98-109
Bonus: The Artist Behind the Artwork
Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first African American artist to gain international acclaim. He was a realist painter and he also stands as one of the leading painters of sacred art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tanner was not only African-American, he might well be the premier painter of African descent in all art history.
You can read more about Tanner at:
In relation to beholding,
"The Annunciation"
by Henry Ossawa Tanner
captivates me.
Here, Mary listens.
Here, Mary questions.
Here, Mary beholds.
Here, Mary responds
as she begins to see
what God is doing
and what she will get to do
for the life of the world.
And she says,
"Let it be done to me
according to Your Word."
More New Year posts:
May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
With anticipation and joy,
Saturday, January 3, 2026
Xmastide Astrophysics | Love That Is Wider than the Universe
 |
| Advent Artwork by Scott Erickson |
"The heavens declare
the glory of God
in the person of
Jesus Christ."
+ Deborah Haarsma,
Astrophysicist, Author &
Former President of BioLogos
As we get ready to step into 2026, I read an article by an astrophysicist that complemented the Lectionary Year A reading (i.e. John 1:1-18) for the first weekend in the new year.
Below is an excerpt of Deborah Haarsma's thoughtful words featured in the printed article, "CT: The Incarnation Sheds Light on Astrophysics."
The Incarnation Sheds Light
on Astrophysics
The 27 huge dishes of the Very Large Array radio telescope were lined up on interconnected tracks, stretching for miles across the desert Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. There was little other human activity in sight. My astrophysics colleagues were holed up in the nearby control room, monitoring the data as it came in from halfway across the universe. But I was outside, bundled up against the cold wind, looking up with bare eyes.
The sky was carpeted with stars.
Words I had memorized long ago
rang through my heart:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands”
(Ps. 19:1).
Words I had memorized long ago
rang through my heart:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands”
(Ps. 19:1).
We were using the telescope to hunt for gravitational lenses—places in the universe where space itself is curved. Earthly scales felt insufficient to describe a reality where our sun, for all its size, is but a single grain of sand on the long beach of the universe. ... In Western culture, we often assume small means insignificant. ... (Yet) The coming of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago gives powerful answers to today’s questions. If the heavens are unfathomable in their greatness, then this truth is even more stunning:
The Creator of the cosmos
chose to become incarnate here.
When God became man, he came to a planet that is but a pinprick in the emptiness of space. In our solar system, the Sun carries the Earth and other planets along as it orbits the Milky Way galaxy, sailing among a vast number of stars of which it is but one.
Astronomers estimate the total number of stars in our galaxy at about 100 billion ... Beyond the Milky Way, many more galaxies are scattered along huge filaments throughout space. Some clump together in small groups, like the Milky Way and its neighbor galaxy Andromeda. Many merge and collide throughout their lives, accumulating mass and birthing new stars. Hundreds or even thousands of galaxies can conglomerate in rich galaxy clusters, which are some of the largest objects known to humans.
The total number of galaxies in the universe is difficult to count, since many are too distant for us to detect. But researchers recently measured the collective faint light of the galaxies and estimated that the visible universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies—each of which contains billions or trillions of stars.
Most of the stuff in the universe
is not stars, however.
is not stars, however.
Data from the WMAP and Planck satellites
have shown that 27 percent
of the universe is dark matter—
a scientific mystery that
doesn’t emit or block light
and that we can detect only by
its gravitational effect on other matter.
The greatest part of the universe
—68 percent—is dark energy,
an even more mysterious substance
that drives the way the universe expands.
For all our advances in
physics and chemistry,
what we know can describe
only 5 percent of the universe,
including all the stars and
all the atoms on the Periodic Table.
For the remaining 95 percent,
we have no explanation.
Scripture doesn’t mention dark matter or galaxies. Yet the Bible speaks clearly of God’s cosmic scale. In chapter 1 of his gospel, John uses as comprehensive language as possible to talk about what God made. In Colossians 1, Paul proclaims Christ as the Creator of all things. If these first-century apostles had been told about distant galaxies, they no doubt would have declared that those were also created by God.
The Bible’s cosmic claims are timeless, yet they carry more heft when considered alongside the discoveries of modern science. The God who brings out the starry host one by one, calling each by name, can do this for billions upon trillions of stars, not just the few thousand we see at night (Isa. 40:26).
The inconceivable vastness of the universe
does not diminish God—
it shows us more of his greatness.
The place of humans is certainly small;
we find ourselves dwarfed by
both the creation and the Creator.
Yet there’s more to the story.
Although he is Lord of the heavens,
announcing his coming to earth
God also set his heart on humankind.
The Creator of the galaxies,
eternal and unbegotten,
emptied himself and was born as an infant.
At the crossroads of time and space,
he chose to become fully human,
one of us.
The mystery of the Incarnation becomes more profound when we consider the physical aspects. Science has shown that the atoms of our bodies have their origins in the heavens. Hydrogen dates back to the beginning of the universe, when protons formed from cooling primordial plasma. Other elements we need for life—like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen—arose by nuclear fusion in the cores of stars. Most of these atoms stay locked in the interiors of stars, but when a star dies in a supernova explosion, the atoms are flung out into space. The explosion is so powerful that additional elements, like cobalt and nickel, form in the expanding shock wave. Astronomers found recently that collisions of neutron stars produce much of the gold and platinum in the universe.
After leaving the stars, these atoms condense into clouds of gas and dust—tiny, clean grains of minerals, hydrocarbons, and ice drifting between the stars like smoke. When nearby stars light up one of these clouds, we see a stunning nebula of brilliant colors and deep shadows. Some clouds are actually stellar nurseries, where clumps of gas and dust can be dense enough to collapse under their own gravity, eventually leading to nuclear fusion and the birth of a star. The remaining dust stays in orbit around the new star, gradually coalescing into pebbles, then boulders, then moons and planets.
The atoms in our bodies
and our planet are indeed,
as Carl Sagan put it famously,
“star stuff,”
or more poetically, stardust.
But this means something
even more astounding:
When Jesus was conceived in Mary,
he took on atoms from her
—as we all do from our mothers—
and those atoms had histories
stretching far beyond our solar system.
Those atoms assembled into genes
to give shape to his bones and blood
and into organic chemicals
shared with all life on earth.
Each cell of Jesus’ body
embodies his love for his creation
—not only humans but also
the animals, plants, mountains, and rivers
often mentioned in Scripture.
His very atoms once glowed
in beautiful nebulae and powerful supernovae
in the far reaches of space.
Indeed, when God took on human form,
he took on all of creation.
That changes everything.
The Incarnation answers deep questions raised by modern astrophysics about our purpose and significance in the universe. One of the things I love most about astrophysics is the chance to study things that are impossible down on Earth. For example, in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity is defined not as the force described by Isaac Newton but rather as a distortion of the fabric of spacetime. In our everyday lives, Newton’s equations and Einstein’s equations give the same answers, so we don’t notice the difference. But we can see it in galaxy clusters.
Contrary to Newton, who said that light is not affected by gravity, Einstein found that it is. He discovered that space itself is curved and that light follows that curve, changing direction.
In galaxy clusters, the mass is so great that space curves substantially over large distances. An object that curves space this way is called a gravitational lens because—like a piece of warped glass—it distorts what we see through it. The distorted light appears to us as thin arcs circling the foregrounded galaxy cluster, visible in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Those who study relativity soon learn it is about more than curved space. Relativity describes deep and beautiful symmetries in the cosmos— between space and time, energy and momentum. Moreover, the same laws hold true in every location and circumstance we’ve been able to test.
For those who can read the equations,
the depth and universality
of the mathematics is stunning.
Many physicists have thus sensed
the divine behind it.
In 1948, Einstein himself
told his friend William Hermanns,
“I meet [God] every day
in the harmonious laws w
hich govern the universe.
My religion is cosmic.”
Yet that very cosmic harmony can make God seem impersonal. Some years ago, I was out walking and thinking about physics when I suddenly felt overwhelmed by God’s intelligence. It seemed that this immense mind, governing space and time with such precision, couldn’t possibly care about individual people like me. I didn’t doubt God’s existence, but for a season I doubted his love. Einstein felt this too. He also told Hermanns, “My God is too universal to concern himself with the intentions of every human being.” This is where science falls short. The natural world, though it reveals much of its Creator, cannot give us the full picture.
In the Incarnation,
we have God’s ultimate answer:
Yes, God concerns himself
with every human being.
We know it because he came
in person to dwell among us.
The disciples saw him,
touched him, knew his smile,
and felt his love.
A few months after that walk, the Holy Spirit gradually moved in my heart. God’s love started to seem plausible to me again, but now on an entirely deeper level. I realized that the mind of God is superseded only by the heart of God.
Though the Scriptures don’t speak of galaxies, I found in the Bible a larger framework for understanding the cosmos and its loving Creator. The ancient Hebrew psalmist had little conception of the universe as we know it today. But when he penned Psalm 103, he was referring to the largest thing he could conceive:
He does not treat us
as our sins deserve
or repay us according
to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens
are above the earth,
so great is his love
for those who fear him;
as far as the east
is from the west,
so far has he removed
our transgressions from us.
(vv. 10–12)
When the psalmist wrote
of the east and the west,
the heavens and the earth,
he was picturing the furthest extent
in each direction.
He was pointing to
the unfathomable ends of the universe.
But he wasn’t doing so
to point to God’s intelligence.
He was underscoring
the profound height and depth
of God’s love and forgiveness.
Knowing the expanses of the universe,
as we do today,
only gives his point greater gravity.
Whatever else God is doing in the cosmos,
we believe that he took up
the atoms of the universe
to become one of us.
In coming to us as an approachable,
helpless baby,
God’s message is unmistakable:
I made you with intention.
You are loved.
The carpet of stars above declares the shining glory of God. Yet God revealed his deeper glory, and his very heart, when the Word became flesh—with its cosmic implications—and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Through faith, the astrophysical elements of the Incarnation proclaim the stunning depth of the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
The discoveries of science cannot diminish God, for he created it all. Each time we look up at the night sky and consider the stars, we can remember that God delights in reminding us of his love—a love that is wider than the universe.
+ Adapted excerpt from
Deborah Haarsma
Bonus Video
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