Acts 2:43

This verse describes the very early days of the Christian church, just after Pentecost — the moment when the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus's followers and the movement began. The apostles were the original disciples of Jesus, men who had walked with him, watched him die, and witnessed him alive again. The word translated "awe" in Greek (phobos) carries the weight of reverential, stunned wonder — not quite fear, but the feeling of standing in the presence of something far beyond ordinary. The "wonders and miraculous signs" included healings and extraordinary acts that couldn't be explained away. Crucially, "everyone" was affected — the whole community was marked by an unmistakable sense that God was visibly, actively present among them.

God, we've gotten so good at explaining things that we've almost explained you away too. Restore in us that first-church breathlessness — the honest, stunned awareness that you are real and active and still at work. Keep us from the kind of faith that fits too neatly in a box. Amen.

Awe is getting rarer. Not because the world has become less astonishing — sunsets still ignite the horizon, children are still born, galaxies are still incomprehensibly vast — but because we've developed a remarkable talent for explaining things away. The early church hadn't. They had just watched a crucified man walk out of a tomb, ascend into the sky, and then send his Spirit onto a crowd of ordinary fishermen and tax collectors. Awe wasn't a posture they were trying to maintain. It was the only honest response to what they were living through. There's a version of faith that is very tidy. Everything is categorized, explained, and held at a respectful intellectual distance. The early church's faith wasn't tidy — it was breathless. And while you probably can't manufacture that kind of awe on command, you can stop explaining it away. You can pause this week in front of something that doesn't fully make sense — a prayer that got answered, an unexpected peace in a 3 AM panic, a kindness that arrived at exactly the right moment — and instead of reaching for an explanation, just stay in it. Awe isn't irrationality. It's the honest acknowledgment that what you're seeing is bigger than your categories for it.