Wonder

By Devin Dummel

Growing up, I was a very inquisitive boy.  I would ask my parents question after question trying to figure out more about the world.  As they would answer my question, to the best of their ability, it would naturally lead to another question.  And another and another.  My “go to” questions became ‘why’ and ‘how’.  As I child I thought this line of questioning was innocent enough, but now that I am a parent, it’s amazing I didn’t drive my parents insane with my never-ending string of questions.

My inquisitive nature might be the explanation for one of the best Christmas gifts I ever received.  During the height of my “wonder years” my parents bought me a copy of what looks like a college text book, put together by Reader’s Digest, titled, “How in the World?  A Fascinating Journey Through the World.”  When I opened that gift, I was thrilled.  I started reading, and I read that book from cover to cover.  It was a gift that meant the world to me.

What my parents realized was that I was filled with wonder, and as tempting as it might be to stifle the incessant questions, they believed that there was value to be found in a wondering mind.  I will be forever thankful for that gift as well.

I wish the same could be said about the faith culture that I grew up in.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the church that I was raised in, but it wasn’t a place that helped me wonder.  I grew up in a faith culture that discouraged wonder, and valued hard answers.  Everything needed to be right and wrong or black and white.  To be a Christian meant that you had the ‘right’ answer to every wondering spiritual question.  And that worked just fine for a while, until some of the answers I had been told to the wondering questions I had no longer seemed to be enough. 

The struggle with having to have all the answers is that when something doesn’t add up, when one of the answers doesn’t seem quite right, the whole system starts to break down.  But what I discovered as I began to look for the right answers, wasn’t a God who wanted me to have it all figured out, but a God who had created and designed me to be amazed by the wonder of who He is.

When I began to embrace wonder again – and look at the world in a different way, what I began to see all around me were signs and signals – revelations – of the creator that I could not see.  And once again my heart was captured with wonder.  Once again I was amazed.

You may or may not realize this but God has designed each of us for wonder.  And the reality is, every child walks around with an invisible sign saying, amazing me, capture my wonder, entangle my heart and my mind.  Our problem is too often we are more worried about preparing them to live in the world, than allowed them to be amazed by it.

It’s our job as parents and leaders of the next generation is to incite wonder in the lives of our children.  It is our responsibility to help our children discover a world that is filled with and points to the signs of a creator that cannot be seen.   Our divine calling is to worry less about having all the answers and instead join our children, praising God in the same way the psalmist did so long ago saying, "For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are God.” (Psalm 86:10).

This week, try to incite some wonder into the lives of your kids, and embrace the wonder of God in your heart.  I promise the world will be a much more beautiful place when you do.