In a recent morning, watching sunlight fill the morning sky, there was time to for reading Psalm 19 from the Bible. I would look up and out, then read and re-read the Psalm, loving the poetry of sky and words:
The heavens are telling
the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims
God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech
and night to night
declares knowledge.
All of a sudden, I had to just sit. Looking at sky above and words on paper, I had begun to wonder over what happens when wonder overtakes us.
Being out of town, with no dictionary at hand, I typed “definition of wonder” into an Internet search. To my surprise a deeper spiritual wondering came with it. What showed up was a page with one example (“she wondered why the bus was late”) so blasé in comparison to my sense at the moment that I almost stopped. However, more usages, definitions, examples followed. They drew me more deeply into an understanding of what had captured me and brought me to fuller notice of day, sky, Psalm, and the moment of wonder.
Wonder: being filled with great curiosity and amazement; a discovery arousing deep admiration; state of mind produced by something unexpected, extraordinary.
With these phrases and new admiration for the state of wonder that had come to me, I turned again to Psalm 19:
In the heavens God has set
a tent for the sun…
its rising is from the end
of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end
of them;
and nothing is hid
from its heat.
Suddenly, with further curiosity and amazement, I began realizing that the Psalm writer, thousands of years ago, had been filled with admiration, looking up at the sky and the sun. The writer had allowed a state of mind that marveled and let a realization of the extraordinary bring discovery that aroused great curiosity and amazement. The very patterns of day and night in the heavens above tell of the glory of God! Wonder had overtaken the writer of the Psalm—now millennia later and with billions of readers, singers, and reciters of the Psalm in between, it became clear: wonder can overtake us today.
Sometimes we of the 21st century imagine we can get to the last drop of explanation for things. We study so much of physics, chemistry, biology; of sun, sky, horizon, heat and orbits, and find it easy to hide away from letting wonder overtake. Then into our blasé sense blazes a sunlit morning, with colors shouting to be seen and horizons stretching our mind, and the creation of God is extolled by creation’s existence, beauty and arc cross the sky.
Even when we ignore the glory of God in God’s creating, the heavens and skies themselves, day to day, night to night, pour forth glory to God and proclaim God’s handiwork and surprise can wake us up, wonder can overtake us. Each day, each night, the skies tell the glory of God; we can look up and out, marvel at what we see, allow the extraordinary to produce a state of mind that arouses not definitions, but discovery, amazement, surprise, curiosity, wonder.
You are invited, today and each day, tonight and each night, to look up and out, and see.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hovland.
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