Reclaiming a Sense of Wonder

Our eight month old looks at the world through big, bright, shining eyes. Everything is new to him; everything fascinating; everything something to reach for, strive for and engage with. It’s a joy to watch. But sometimes, somehow when I look at him I feel a pang inside: a twitching sense of loss. I search my heart and think to myself ‘where did that youthful exuberance go?’ That sense that the whole world’s your lobster (as Del Boy once said).That sense of anticipation for a pot of gold, not just at the end of every rainbow but at the end of every shower. That joie de vie that takes life by the scruff of the neck and shakes every last ounce of satisfaction out of it before twirling around with a huge wide-eyed grin searching for more.

Now, I’m old enough and sober enough to realise that life can’t be one long mountaintop experience – that there have to be down times for the up times to have any kind of meaning – but that sense can’t take away the feeling that something deeper, something fundamental to our makeup may have been slowly eroded away in my personal experience.

Justin, our associate pastor, talks about the realm of science with such passion and enthusiasm. He’s a chemist who loves Jesus and he’s carried over his passion for the natural world into his life as a church minister. (Science and faith are two worlds that are by no means mutually exclusive.) His passion for Jesus and his passion for discovery shine with infectious intensity. Both are right. Both are a true reflection of a life spent engaging with God.

G K Chesterton, in his eruditely jovial way, paints a picture of God not as a dispassionate, all-powerful creator who sets the world in motion and then takes a step back to gaze on it from a distance, but rather as an enthusiastic personal creator who delights in causing each daisy to sprout into being. That childlike sense of wonder that I see so freely in my son’s eyes is not something reserved for the young and irresponsible but rather a fundamental and wonderful characteristic of our Father God: the Father who hitches up his robes to gallop to greet his wayward son; the Father who sits on the throne and beckons us lovingly to leap up onto the safety and comfort of his kingly lap; the Father who rejoices over us with songs of heartfelt joy.

And so I say to myself, maybe, just maybe, it’s time to start to reclaim that God-given sense of wonder: that thing that’s been slowly choked away by life’s pernicious bindweed; that childlikeness that our creative Creator intended for all of us, his beloved children, to embrace and enjoy.

There are a lot of things we can learn from an eight month old. Perhaps it’s time to start...