The basic storyline of Christianity is truly absurd. The most perfect, holy God creates the world and breathes life into people. It doesn’t take long until those people turn on Him. God is rejected and continuously cast aside as humanity assumes they can do better, than God.

Grieved by humanity’s unrelenting bent towards evil, God floods the world and starts over. It isn’t long until humanity once again thinks they know better than God. But God is merciful and calls a man out of idolatry to be the father of His people. It’s from this man, Abraham, that God promises to make a nation for Himself. But it happens again. While Israel tried to love God, they rejected Him for the false gods of other nations and worshiped everything but God. The Lord sought their attention through various prophets, His mercy flowing over a people who didn’t care. So, God rejected them. With that, the story should have ended.

The problem is, God had made a promise to Adam and Eve to crush the head of the serpent through Eve’s offspring (Genesis 3). Then God made a promise to Abraham to bless all the peoples of the earth through Abraham’s offspring (Genesis 12). Both were unconditional promises secured by the faithfulness of God alone. So, God continued weaving His marvelous plan to save us anyway.

How? By offering up His very own Son as an acceptable sacrifice for sin, defeating death, and gifting humanity the option of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s absolutely absurd. And here’s what’s amazing: Jesus came although He knew humanity’s hatred would put Him on the cross. Tell me, what kind of God would die for people who hate him. It’s truly unbelievable. But what’s crazier is that this is not fiction - it’s our story. 

But here’s the question: Do we still marvel? No really, do we still marvel at this beautifully absurd story?  We’re quick to marvel at this world. We marvel at movie stars, vacation homes, TV shows, good singing, athletes, storms and injustice and people who don’t see life the same way we do, but what about the unrelenting goodness of God? Do we still marvel at that? What about the impact of the Gospel through a thousand generations? What about God’s continued faithfulness? What about His grace over a humanity that continues to reject Him?

There isn’t a story more absurd than this one. If we stand in awe of anything, let’s stand in awe of God, whose mercy and love and faithfulness is a wonder worth pondering for all of eternity.