Pray that God would awaken your soul and give you fresh eyes to see new insights into his Word. We are human. We bore easily. Only God can make his Word new every morning. Only God can give us the desire to plumb the depths of his revelation to us.

Several years ago, we visited a restaurant with my husband’s side of our family. There was an inflatable snowman in the lobby, and during our long wait to be seated, we observed that every few minutes a fan would turn on, blowing air into the white nylon heap on the floor, expanding it to become a snowman. Then the fan would switch off, and the snowman would slowly “melt” to the floor. Two of our nephews, both about five years old, watched the spectacle. The first had been to the restaurant many times and quickly became bored with this clever trick. The second little boy was a missionary kid who had never seen anything like this before. He watched with glee, clapping his hands in delight as the snowman inflated, and then crouched down to follow it as it deflated. He did this over and over, never losing his delight. Perhaps if he had seen the snowman many times before, as his cousin had, he would have lost interest and become bored with the repetition and predictability. But for the moment, he only expressed sheer delight.

I am so grateful for this experience. It reminds me of how we humans fail to appreciate what has become familiar. When I read the nativity story, do I experience sheer delight and awe at God’s grace, or has the repetition of this story over the years dulled my senses to the magnitude and significance of what happened in Bethlehem more than two thousand years ago? The fact that we become easily bored with both the ordinary and even with the familiar extraordinary is very sad evidence of the fall of man.

Don’t Let Familiarity Steal Your Awe

We are all in danger of familiarity stealing our awe and delight in all that God is, all he has done, and all he has made. Surely, it is a great loss when we don’t sit and marvel at the changing colors of the fall leaves or when we cease to be amazed by the intricacies of snowflakes. But when it comes to missing the staggering significance of the great truths of the Bible, it is an especially tragic loss. How many times have we read about the miracles of Jesus—the calming of the storm, the healing of the lepers, and the multiplication of bread and fish?

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