The Wonder of It All

 
Yesterday my pastor held up a small plastic bag filled with leaves, sticks, rocks and even a piece of concrete from his driveway. It belongs to his three year old daughter. Similar plastic bags are all around his house, filled with an assortment of odds and ends from outside—her bounty.

With excited anticipation, his little girl says, “Come on, Daddy, let’s go look for treasures.” To her, the smallest, most ordinary things are captivating. At three, she is still filled with wide-eyed wonder.

As I thought about these things I realized that sometimes we have writer’s block for one simple reason—we’ve lost our sense of wonder. Everything becomes ordinary, mundane, dull. We are busy, burdened, hurried, worried, and we cease to look around us and gasp at God’s creation.

If you are facing a blank white page and can’t muster a word to put on it, I counsel you to renew your sense of wonder. Put everything else aside and choose one of these assignments. Better yet, do all of them!

-If you are near an ocean or large body of water, stand at the shoreline and look out on the water. Remember how big God is and how small you are.

-Look up into a clear night sky. Marvel at the stars. Search out constellations and watch long enough to see a shooting star.

-Bend down to the earth and watch a caterpillar inch his way along or a busy ant hurrying and scurrying.

-Throw a blanket on the ground and gaze at the clouds swirling like moving pictures.

-Look into the face of a child, an elderly person, or someone you love and see the image of God.

If the world can steal your wonder, it can steal your words. Don’t let it. Take a few moments every day to bask in the wonder of it all.