Wonderful Wonder

This a great article that I wanted to pass along from Graham Cooke's website...

Wonderful Wonder 

Jesus’ own sense of wonder surfaced whenever He saw others who walked in innocence and purity. One of the few times Jesus said “behold”—or, as we would term it, “wow”—was when He first met Nathanael, a man who later became one of His disciples. “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Jesus exclaimed in John 1:47 (King James Version).

What did Jesus see in Nathanael? He saw a man without deceit. The Message version of the Bible translates Jesus as saying, “There's a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.” Jesus saw his innocence and loved it.

Innocence is a quality we are born with and then slowly lose through the experiences of our life. Every time we have one of those bitter experiences, as we call them, a part of our purity erodes away. The way we think and perceive things in the spirit withers as we become guarded, wary, mistrustful, and suspicious. When another bitter experience occurs in our life, another layer of grime is placed on our sense of wonder. Given enough time, we become unsure that we were ever innocent. Meanwhile, we look at everyone around us and see the worst.

Read the rest of this article at grahamcooke.com under the May Newsletter 2009.