It started with a sea slug. A beautifully amazing and
brightly colored one featured in the documentary Planet Earth.
The origin story of Wondern Awe is hard to pinpoint
exactly, but we remember that the series of conversations we had were sparked by this one spectacular animal. During a season of life where we were both discouraged and struggling with a lack of joy in our faith, deep in the trenches of motherhood and other life burdens, this documentary deeply moved us and sparked wonder and awe that felt long numb and dead. Seeing this sea-slug, a swimming Pucci scarf, created thousands of years before human eyes would ever glimpse their splendor, gave us a new deeper understanding of the Creator’s pure enjoyment in beauty. It somehow created peace in our turbulent hearts.
We began to challenge each other, pray for each other and talk through these things. We soon realized that though we were long-time Christians, all the gospel truth we knew was mostly head knowledge. We longed to connect our head to our hearts and have the Gospel
permeate our everyday moments. As artists, with a little encouragement from Brene Brown, we began to join two things we already practiced separately; our time with the
Lord and our art. Practicing our faith in creative ways was a small shift in thinking, but a mountain movement in our Faith and lives.
Those sparks that we experienced from the wonder of God’s creation in a sea-slug, slowly turned into eyes that could see glimmers of glory in the ordinary and has
been steadily transforming our lives. Far from our glory selves, we are still being sanctified. Our daily liturgies which we originally built for ourselves, we now share with you. Our
hope is that wherever you are in your journey with Christ, you will be gripped with a little more wonder + awe.
PARADOXES
a Puritan Prayer from The Valley of Vision
O CHANGELESS GOD,
Under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that
the more I do, the worse I am,
the more I know, the less I know,
the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
the more I love, the more there is to love.
O wretched man that I am!
O Lord,
I have a wild heart,
and cannot stand before thee;
I am like a bird before a man.
How little I love thy truth and ways!
I neglect prayer,
by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly,
by knowing thou hast saved my soul.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be
an evangelical hypocrite,
who sins more safely because grace abounds,
who tells his lusts that Christ’s blood
cleanseth them,
who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell,
for he is saved,
who loves evangelical preaching, churches,
Christians, but lives unholily.
My mind is a bucket without a bottom,
with no spiritual understanding,
no desire for the Lord’s Day,
ever learning but never reaching the truth,
always at the gospel-well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition,
with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
so I forget easily the lessons learned,
and thy truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet carries home
the water of grace.
COLOSSIANS 1:9-20 msg
Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we
haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise
minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough
understanding of the ways in which God works. We
pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of
you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and
more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We
pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long
haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-
strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable
and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes
us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful
that he has for us.
God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons.
He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so
much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of
the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.
15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be
seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in
everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above
and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of
angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose
in him. He was there before any of it came into existence
and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it
comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like
a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection
parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning
to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone.
So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its
proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all
the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and
things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together
in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that
poured down from the cross.