December 23, 2024 – Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“Exiled from the truths that the old ones knew, we fill our days with distractions to help us avoid the hard questions that we fear can’t be answered. Or we give ourselves over to false enchantments—the distractions and deceptions of money, power, the occult, sex, drugs, and all the allure of the material world—in a vain attempt to connect with something beyond ourselves to give meaning and purpose to life.” (Dreher, Rod. Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age (p. 13). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.)

“The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” Ecclesiastes 1:1-4

The word Vanity or Vain can have several meanings. We all know someone who is so self-centered that we call them “vain”. Carly Simon wrote that famous line “You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you.” In the reading from Ecclesiastes, the writer uses the word in an attempt to tell the world how meaningless it all felt. His attempts to make money, to gather a harvest were “vain” to him because he realized it would all go to someone else after he died. It all was vanity – fleeting and useless. In my reading from the book Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, Rod Dreher is also talking about the useless ventures of a lot of people to find meaning in their lives through the material things of this life. Again, we know a lot of people in our lives who suffer from such vain attempts.

But this exposes a flaw of our world today. While so many think they find meaning through technology, that they are dazzled with the newest gadget or the most amazing Artificial Intelligence, this is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to the mystical and the divine. We have heard of the experiences of the people in the village of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, seeing visions of the Virgin Mary back in June 24, 1981 – or the Garabandal apparitions — appearances of Saint Michael the Archangel and the Blessed Virgin Mary. These visions occurred throughout the years of 1961 to 1965 to four young schoolgirls in the rural village of San Sebastián de Garabandal. And, in my mind, that is the same mystery we experience when we proclaim and have the faith that Jesus is present in the bread and wine of our Holy Communion.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Join me as we once again experience the mystery and the wonder of Christ Jesus coming into the world born to peasant parents in an unknown, backwater town like Bethlehem. How mysterious and wonderful it all is.

Pastor Dave