“ Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder and he gave it to me. - Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi
— A normal person will stand before a Claude Monet painting and pick their nose; a person filled with wonder will stand there fighting back the tears. By and large, our world has lost its sense of wonder. We have grown up. Our breath no longer catches at the sight of a rainbow. We no longer stop to appreciate the smell of a rose. We have grown bigger and everything else smaller, less impressive. We become sophisticated and wise in the ways of the world. We no longer run our fingers through water, gaze at the stars, or lie in the grass, finding shapes in the clouds. Water is H2O, the stars have been classified and named, and you cannot walk on the clouds. Thanks to satellite television and airplanes, we can visit faraway places with ease. Places only available in the past by daring explorers who gave up years to reach their destinations can now be reached by us in mere hours. There was a time in the not too distant past when a thunderstorm caused amazement and fear in a grown man and the smell of rain sent chills through your body. They made you feel small. Wonder is being edged out of this world by science. The more we know about meteorology, the less inclined we are to pray during a thunderstorm. Airplanes now fly above, below, and around them. Satellites reduce them to photographs. Certainly, the new can amaze us - a space shuttle, the latest electronic gadget, the softest diaper - until tomorrow. Until the new becomes old and yesterday’s wonder becomes today’s boredom. As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. We get so preoccupied with ourselves - the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive - that we become immune to the glory of creation. We barely notice the beauty of the clouds in the sky. We are hardly ever outside to watch the sun rise or set, or to feel the crunch that the frozen, dew-covered grass makes under our feet on a winter morning. The sound of birds outside your window goes unnoticed or becomes a nuisance. The wild blackberries ripen and wither. We avoid the cold and heat. We refrigerate ourselves in the summer and bake ourselves in the winter. We rake up every leaf as fast as it falls and trim off every imperfect branch before it has a chance. We are so accustomed to buying pre-packaged meats, poultry, and fish in supermarkets that we never think about the bounty of God’s creation or his provision. We grow complacent and lead practical lives. We miss the experiences of awe, reverence, and wonder. Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in Spirit, but also in matter - in a deer silently grazing in a field, in fire, in water, in a rainbow after a summer shower, in the smell of fresh towels, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in a child licking an ice cream cone, in the smell of fresh cut grass, and in a woman with wind blown hair. God intended for us to discover his presence in the world around us. So we often walk amid the beauty and bounty of nature and talk or think nonstop - we miss the panorama of color and smell and sound. We might as well have remained inside our artificially lit homes. Nature’s lessons are lost and the opportunity to be wrapped in silent wonder before our Creator passes. Creation doesn’t calm our troubled spirits, restore our perspective, or delight us in ever part of our being - as it should. It reminds us instead of mundane chores like changing the page on the calendar, cleaning out the gutters, raking the leaves, ordering our snow tires, or mowing our lawn.
