Wonderful Counselor

Most of us were named almost immediately after our birth with a first, middle, and last name. In western culture, names don’t really have a ton of meaning, but in the culture Jesus grew up in, names were the basis of your identity. Some estimate that God has as many as 72 names. As much as I would like to dwell on all 72, for the purposes of this message, we will zero in on just this one: Wonderful Counselor.

Scripture states, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6 ESV).

I’m looking forward to unravelling this name for Jesus because of the word wonderful. Wonderful, in the Hebrew, denotes something extraordinary and even incomprehensible. It is a phenomenon residing outside the realm of all that is ordinary and expected.

As a child, I heard that name, Wonderful Counselor, every Christmas and would quickly relegate it to the heap of other terms and ideas about God that seemed insignificant at the time. Why? I wasn’t impressed. There was nothing I could drag from its vowel and consonant formation that would amaze me. Isaiah said Wonderful Counselor, but I felt like I was holding an empty box wrapped up with bows and bright colored paper. Or worse yet, it wasn’t empty but the contents were stale and dull.

Allow me a little jaunt down memory lane. I remember two gifts from my childhood that might help explain how Wonderful Counselor can sound so ordinary, but it is really extraordinary.

One of these gifts was received when I was 10. It was December and the snow and cold had already sunk into our simple country life. One particular day my mother placed a Christmas gift underneath my bed, waiting for its special unveiling on Christmas morning. It happened to be a gift from one of my aunts.

What is a 10-year-old boy to do with a beautifully wrapped gift under his bed and Christmas over three weeks away!? Well, whatever I was supposed to do, I didn’t do. I started poking holes in the wrapping paper because I wanted desperately to know what amazing pleasures awaited me this Christmas season.

One hole was not enough to reveal the mystery so the poke soon became a tear and all the contents of that well-meaning Christmas gift were quickly revealed: clothes. Can you hear the disappointment that surfaces in my memory of this package? You could have packed that box full of sawdust and I might have had a better reaction to what was inside. Needless to say, I didn’t bother that particular gift, even when it was time to finally and officially open it.

Why? There was nothing magical and wonderful for a 10-year-old imagination. I was conceptualizing some grand and glorious amusement but felt stunted by the practicality of the gift. And if you would have wrapped up the words Wonderful Counselor and put sparkling bows around this Messianic gift from God the Father, my 10-year-old mind would have put the package back under the bed and let it slip away from memory.

Now for the second gift. This gift filled me with wonder and joy and hope. It was a Tonka Road Grader. I think of this gift even today, and I can remember the smell of the Tonka yellow paint as I pulled back the wrapping.

I felt paradise open its doors to me the moment my hand smoothly touched on the cab of the grader. Why? This was my grade school dream—to sit at the helm of this powerful machine, methodically moving gravel or dirt in a way that only adults could.

This toy was my key to great things, my connection to great power, my awakening to the potential of a 25-year-old man inside of a 5-year-old boy’s frame. That small physique would not let me drive the real thing. But somehow this toy gave my mind permission to experience youthful ambition and childhood playfulness. It allowed me to search ahead fifteen or twenty-five years to a time when the dream could become reality. My parents were not planting their dreams on me but they were allowing me to explore at least one of my passions and purposes that could work into a reality one day.

It’s as if they were whispering to my child’s brain, “Give it a try, kid. Take this smaller version and try it out. Search for that future that fits. Explore that for which you might be wonderfully made.” Even today, at my ripening age, I still look back on that gift with fondness because it connected me with possibilities and wonder of a future that is hard to describe. That gift put the wonderful into the hands of a child and they let me drive.

When I think of the term Wonderful Counselor, it defines a future for our wondering eyes. It is not the dreary box that was placed under my bed. That was filled with the ordinary. This name, Wonderful Counselor, is embodied by a real person who watches and leans into our lives as we open up a future that has stunning bright paint with hard and practical edges. He watches our childhood amazement. He puts in front of us a future with glimmering wonder that mirrors the greatest childhood gift ever given.

But as we open this gift we have an extraordinary God standing close by, and he allows us to take steps in his big world with our childlike feet and our wondering minds. He lets us dream about brighter days and hopeful futures. He provides experiences and opportunities that all fit into a wonder-filled future he has designed for us.

He loves us with a passion of the most doting parent ever but also says to us, “You have a purpose in my biggest of all plans.” He promises to stand by us as we unwrap our next gift called tomorrow. Some days we will be in awe of what he has planned. Some days we feel like we’ve unwrapped the sterile and overtly practical. But each day the Wonderful Counselor is building up a future that will astound the most imaginative minds among us. He is causing a bright and fascinating paradise that he has wrapped up for us with bows and tinsel and amazing, colorful paper. And he will open up for us this gift as we grow up in him, and hear his Wonderful advice and counsel.

This Christmas season, we can still pull back some of the wonderful memories of childhood gifts. We all long for something more wonderful than here and now. This inkling and searching of our hearts will get opened up more and more.

Lord Jesus, let us look on you with wonder because you have prepared a future that is more bright and beautiful than we can ever imagine. Be our Wonderful Counselor now and always. Amen.

Blessings to you all,
Pastor Al