I loved the television series Monk. Although he was a bit extreme in his long list of fears, I could relate to some of them, to a point.
In one episode, he and Natalie, his assistant, arrived at a crime scene where a double rainbow filled the sky. Monk couldn’t understand Natalie’s enthusiastic response to the rainbow.
His response was typical Monk.
“Not really a double rainbow, is it? “Double” implies equal. The top one is 40% smaller.”
Natalie looked at him, incredulously. “Don’t you have any sense of wonder?”
We were made for wonder. We were made to celebrate tiny details, experience tiny moments of pause in our fast-paced lives. We were made to see God’s fingerprints all over our lives.
And yet we lose this sense of wonder when our days fill up with projects and deadlines, tasks and events, when we are too busy doing to see wonder in the world around us.
Children are good at finding wonder. No matter what is going on, my children will stop what they are doing to look at the smallest bug. “Mama! You’ve GOT to see this!” When I don’t stop and look, I see the incredulous looks on their faces. They might as well be saying “Don’t you have any sense of wonder?”
We recently went to the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, MS. On the tour, we went to a petting zoo, of sorts, where we could watch and lightly touch sting rays, crabs and sea stars.
I watched the sting rays swimming non-stop in the oval tank in the middle of the room. I noticed a little boy bending down at a section in the glass where you could see the sting rays underwater. He watched for so long that I grew curious. I bent down to see what he saw. Instead of swimming, the sting rays were gliding gracefully through the water. It was beautiful. “You’ve GOT to see this!” I grabbed my husband’s hand and pulled him down to share in a moment of wonder.
Nature often gives me moments of wonder. With animals, I’m amazed at the details, the color, the ways they act and survive. With the mountains or pictures from space, I’m amazed at the beauty. I feel small in the face of such grandeur, and, at the same time, I feel loved. God created the beauty around us and yet He knows the deepest parts of our hearts. And that thought fills me with wonder.
Indescribable also captures this sense of wonder