Astonished with great Astonishment

As I have continued in my New Testament class my instructor pointed out something which I had never really noticed before;the frequent use of the word 'astonished' by Mark. Now granted astonished is not the word that would have been used in the original Greek, as it comes from a middle french word, however, I think the meaning remains the same. Often we think of the word as meaning to be caught by surprise, but it's much older meaning literally means to thunder out, or to be thunder-struck. This is the meaning I think that Mark was trying to convey to his readers. Not just that the people who witnessed Jesus were surprised, or intrigued by his doctrine, but rather what he taught hit them like a bolt of lighting, charging their whole system with awe and wonder.
One particular example of this is from where I drew my title for this week's post. Jesus had just raised the daughter of Jarius and the girl is now walking about. Peter, whose memoirs Mark is writing, must have had a most jarring memory of the event, because in one sentence he proclaims that "... they were astonished with a great astonishment." Wow, what an event. I have since consulted my Portuguese Bible to see how it was translated to see if that would shed a different light on the scene. The translation of the first "astonished" literally translated means haunted, or over shadowed. Now I don't think that it was meant in a negative way as is the typical use today, though it may have been a little frightening to see at first, as one who was dead is now walking about. Rather think what was meant, was that it was an even that no one would ever forget, something they would think about every day of their lives, especially that of the little girl.
Mark was trying to convey this message to us in his Gospel, the life of Christ was something so fantastic and awe inspiring, that knowing his teachings and witnessing his life was something that was akin to being struck by lighting. I pause and think to myself, how often do we really stop and think about how truly marvelous and grand the life of Jesus really was? I think it is far too easy to lose that astonishment that Mark was trying to covey to us, we fail to see the hand of the Lord in so much of what goes on day to day.
I am reminded of the story told by President Eyring about when he kept a journal of everything that happened in the lives of him and his children in which the hand of the Lord could be seen. The feeling I got when he shared this story was that when he went back and read all that the Lord had done for him and his family, he must have been truly astonished at all the tender mercies bestowed upon him in every hour.
I would challenge all of us, myself included, to do everything in our power to hold on to the astonishment that is shared with us from the words of the apostles and prophets in the scriptures and today. If we have lost it, then we must find it again approaching the Lord in humility to show us how the same miraculous, and astonishing, hand that raised Jarius' daughter from the dead; that is active in our lives even now.