Reading Mother Teresa--Bewonderment

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;

let your glory be over all the earth. Psalm 57:11

The basic paradigm by which I’ve always seen the Christian life is the outline of a drama that rises from the handbook of doctrine with which I was raised. That outline goes like this: “sin, salvation, service.”

The story line begins with sin – our knowledge of it, as it exists within us. Calvin starts even a bit earlier, with the heavens, with our sense of God as manifest in his world: what we see and experience. Because humans can’t help but see God’s marvelous work in the heavens and the earth around us, we come to know that there is a God. With that knowledge, we feel our own limitations – that we aren’t God. And there begins our knowledge of human limits, our knowledge, finally, of sin.

That conviction draws us closer to God because we need a Savior. Sin precedes salvation, or so the story goes, through the second act.

Once we know that he loves us, in spite of our sin, our hearts fill, our souls rejoice; we can’t help but celebrate our salvation. That celebration leads us into gratitude and service, into doing what we can to be his agents of love in the world he loves so greatly.

Sin, salvation, service – three acts of a drama that is composes all of our lives.

Mother Theresa’s take on a very similar tale in three different acts, was created, I suppose, by her experiences in the ghettos of Calcutta. We begin with repulsion, she says, what we see, she says – brokenness, sadness – offends, prompts us to look away.

But we really can’t or shouldn’t or won’t; we have to look misery in its starving face, and when we do, we move from repulsion to compassion – away from rejection and toward loving acceptance. End Act II.

The final act is what she called “bewonderment,” which is sheer wonder plus a-grade admiration. Our compassion leads us to bewonderment.

“Bewonderment” is likely one of those words no one uses but everyone understands. Still, like reverence, it’s hard to come by in a world where our sorest needs are never more than a price tag away.

I’ll admit that bewonderment is hard to come by for me, perhaps because it isn’t so clearly one of the chapters in the story I was told as a boy, the story that is still deeply embedded in my soul. “Service” is the end of the Christian life – or always has been – for me, not “bewonderment.”

I’m more than a little envious of David’s praise in Psalm 57. What he says to God in prayer is something I rarely tell him. I don’t think I’ve ever asked God not to hide his little light under a bushel, to display his radiant grace from pole-to-pole in my life and yours. I’m forever asking for favors, some big, some not, but am only rarely into adoration, in part, I suppose, because I’m so rarely in awe.

But bewonderment, awe, is something I’m learning, even this morning, and for that I’m thankful – for the book of songs, for David, and for the God David knew so intimately that he could speak the way he does in Psalm 57.

It’s difficult for some of us to be intimate with God – to be so close to a being so great and grand and seemingly out of reach. But bewonderment is something I think we can learn, all of us, even an old man like me, if he has ears.