“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

“Has my faith gone dull? I ask myself this question on occasion. It’s very easy to slip into a routine and allow everyday cares to get in the way of a life filled with wonder. Christianity can be reduced, if we are not careful, to rules, attending church once in a while and attempting to be a ”good person”.

** Let’s be honest, religion can be boring.**
Those are hard words to write considering the vocation I have chosen (or better said called to). More than once I have heard the phrase “church is boring.” As a kid, Sunday was the worst day of the week because we had to go to church. It was a drudgery to get up on Sunday morning and sit through a set of rituals that I did not understand and listen to a man pontificate about things I did not care about.

If we lose sight of the awe, mystery and power of God, religion is just a set of dry rituals and empty dogmas. How can we recapture the wonder of our faith?

Part of the problem is, we have fallen into a trap. We believe that everything can be explained. We need to know “why?” That is the dilemma of the western mind. We need to figure it all out, explain away the mystery of the cosmos, yet even the Apostle Paul knew that was not possible this side of heaven. He writes to the Corinthian church “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT).

Wonder is “radical amazement”. When was the last time you went outside at night, looked up and said “WOW!” The Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote “As civilization advances the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only want for appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.” How can we recapture the wonder?

First, it begins by looking at the world in a new way, seeing small everyday moments with fresh eyes. Last October I was driving down a country highway, and I noticed a tree, the leaves were ablaze with color. The Midwest in the fall is truly spectacular! Usually, I would just drive by, but for some reason, I pulled over, took a picture and then just stood there and looked at it, taking it all in. I thought to myself “I need to do this more!” God has created this beautiful thing for me to enjoy and I usually just pass it by, without notice. Something truly wonderful happens when we see each moment of our life as a gift.

Secondly, God is so big, great, mighty, awesome, loving and mysterious that I will never entirely figure him out, but I can enjoy an incredible and satisfying relationship with my creator. People that tell me they think they have this whole “God, Christian, Bible thing” figured out scare me. Can we figure God out in His totality? Does he even want us to? I love what’s recorded in the Old Testament book of Job “”Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? I have come to appreciate that there are some things about God I will never figure out, and honestly, some things don’t make sense to my finite mind, but I am ok with that. When someone asks me a hard question about God, and I don’t know the answer, I have grown comfortable with saying “I don’t know,” instead of making up some smart sounding but cheap answer. Being honest is so refreshing in an age when we hide behind how smart we think we are.

I have a few more thoughts that I will share in the next post. How do you keep “wonder” alive in your life?