I mentioned last week that my grandson and I watched a couple of Marvel Movies.  The action is epic.  Super-powers, battles, conquest, space/time travel.  Those people have a lot more going on than counseling and sermon preparation.  They are saving the world every other day from evil beings with super-powers of their own.  My life is pretty boring compared to Ant-Man and Dr. Strange.  However, the older we get, the less impressed we are with many things in life.  We not only become harder to impress, we can even get cynical.  I enjoy a good action movie but I know deep down that most of that stuff is computer animated and Ant-Man’s every day real world probably includes English Muffins and black coffee—just like mine.  Is there anything left in the world that is truly awesome?  By that I mean, awe-inspiring?  And, the answer is…….YES!  What?  Creation is still pretty epic but even greater is God’s work of new creation.  God has been redeeming and restoring human beings for thousands of years.  It goes on every day, quietly and steadily, like leaven in a lump.   There is no way, humanly speaking, that the church should be in existence today.  The beginnings were weak, the middle was messy and we’re not doing so well today.  Read any account of church history and you’ll find stories of failures, mis-steps, sins and rebellion.  Yet, roughly 2 billion people on this planet right now are a part of the Body of Jesus Christ.  How has that happened?  In spite of plagues, pandemics, political upheavals, earthquakes, famines, wars and countless philosophical and intellectual attacks, the Church has been built, blessed and protected.  It’s not our ingenuity or a strategic plan.  We’re here by the power, promise and presence of the One who forms us.  He is AWESOME.  What He is doing is AWESOME.  And what is yet to come is AWESOME.  Don’t lose sight of what is real and don’t lose your child-like sense of wonder.