Becoming Wonder-full
The whole arcing sky was on fire, neon pink clouds flaming in furrows across the horizon. I gasped as I caught my first glimpse and exclaimed, “Oh, Lord … how gorgeous!!!”
Photo credit: Brad Mann (Unsplash)
A couple of evenings later, as I sat “praying on paper” in my favorite chair, I sensed God prompting, “Look up!” The full moon had been rising in front of me, glowing white in the velvet black night. Lifting my gaze, I saw clouds forming a heart around the moon with a moonbow encircling it all. Beautiful, and so very fleeting – I wondered if I was the only one who got to see that momentary love note from my Abba. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” poet Gerard Manley Hopkins exclaimed and then pondered why we don’t see beauty in Creation or the God of whom all of it is reflection.
Children are born with a sense of wonder. You see it in their eyes as they gaze at the world around them, stooping to study a snail, sniff a flower, scoop up a fascinating bug.
Photo credit: Kian Zhang (Unsplash)
Anyone who has been on a walk with a toddler knows that there is no rushing. Every couple of steps presents fresh opportunities for curiosity and exploration. We are invited into wonder, and if we are receptive these little ones have much to teach us. Lessons in humility, in truly noticing, in awe and mystery, in slowing down and savoring. If we adopt their pace and see through their eyes, we’ll notice the iridescent wings of a dragonfly, the intricate design of a single snowflake, the beauty in each face we encounter.
Photo credit: Athanasios Papazacharias (Unsplash)
Can you remember losing your sense of wonder or, perhaps, setting it aside for more “grown-up” priorities? After all, wonder rarely (if ever) coincides with efficiency or productivity or responsibility. Clearly, those are all needful at times and yet wonder may be more of a necessity than we realize. Could it be that wonder is an antidote to worry, to frenetic rushing, to taking on the weight of the world? Jesus, in the midst of teaching the crowds gathered on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee, addressed the subject of anxiety. He invited His listeners that day and all of us more than twenty centuries later to “Behold the birds of the air…” and “Consider the wildflowers…” (Matt 6:26,28) much as a child full of wonder would do. In the Greek, the two verbs mean “to observe fixedly” and “to examine carefully” – can’t you just see chubby fingers holding a flower and minutely examining it or a little head tipped back, eyes gazing in wonder at the birds overhead?
Photo credit: Here (Unsplash)
John O’Donohue similarly addressed our often-exhausted bodies and wearied souls:
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
From “For One Who Is Exhausted: A Blessing”
Looking with wonder, slowing down and truly seeing, reminds us of our Creator’s mighty power and our Father’s good, good heart. For when we notice the intricacy and intentionality displayed in things as ephemeral as a spiderweb, how can we not conclude that He is applying at least that same level of intentionality and attention to us and to our lives? “And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow,” Jesus assured, “he will certainly care for you” (Matt 6:30).
Isaiah, in awe and worship, exulted, “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing” (Is 40:26). And David, who stared in wonder at a sky full of stars, exclaimed,
“O Lord our God, the majesty and glory of your name fills all the earth and overflows the heavens. You have taught the little children to praise you perfectly. … When I look up into the night skies and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you have made— I cannot understand how you can bother with mere puny man, to pay any attention to him! And yet you have made him only a little lower than the angels…” (Ps 8:1-5a).
David also professed, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives” (Ps 37:23). Wonder leads us to a right view of God and to a right view of ourselves. He is God, and I am not. I can rest in His good and loving care. So living with wonder also leads to freedom: freedom to live unhurried in the world (not simply that I do not rush, but that my soul is at ease), freedom to live attentively to God’s fingerprints all around me, freedom to lie down in the green pastures and rest beside the still waters He provides, freedom to worship this infinitely powerful and intimately personal God of ours, and freedom to embrace and receive as gifts the miracles that inhabit every moment of our lives if we but have eyes to see them. The wonder-filled eyes of a child.
Photo credit: Aakash Sunuwar (Unsplash)
Accipere Diem
Rain cocooned a waking world,
holding it cozy and close.
Air carried the scent of autumn showers,
wafting notes of musty leaves and distilled wood smoke.
And I sucked it in,
reveling in scents and senses.
My daughter’s warm laughter rippled,
sending waves of JOY into the space between us.
And I savored the sound.
Leaves breathed, delicate stoma
sipping carbon dioxide and sighing oxygen.
And I watched in wonder.
Orion hunted in the inky black sky,
myriad stars strewn diamond-like across his path.
And I gazed, awestruck.
Even as I am borne hurtling through the night,
coming abruptly upon a new day already-dawned,
I anticipate…
Soon I first will hold my precious grandson,
nuzzle the downy head of this child so fresh from God.
And I will inhale the smell of him and remember.
My son will wrap me in his strong embrace,
enfolding me in love and welcome.
And I will soak up the sensation of being held.
Majesty. Mystery. Miracle. Moments…
all packed with God-glory,
each overflowing with God-goodness.
Doxologies for a soul fully alive.
(Rosalyn Otto, 16 November 2023)
Blog post written by Rosalyn Otto