Look deeply at a flower or even a blade of grass; stare at the stars from a primitive prairie; touch the skin of another; read about the deep ocean trenches and the microbial life teeming around the vents of lava and hot water; study the patterns in a mud dauber's nest or the movement of ants or the shape of a goat's pupil; read an article on genetics or astrophysics or photosynthesis; feel the warmth of a campfire on your face; consider the grain of different types of wood; look at the layers of sediment in a bank cutaway along a river; watch a gecko effortlessly scamper up a wall and across a ceiling, or a water bug skittering across the still waters of a pond; notice the patterns in the ice of that same pond in the winter; think about the neurochemistry of thought, that as you think about it there are chemical and electrical signals dancing in your brain; listen to the breathing of a sleeping toddler; smell the skin of a baby; remember something--anything--memory can be explained, but its no less a mystery; taste a pineapple; listen to the voice of a child; be still for a moment; pay attention to anything!
I don't know why boredom isn't a sin.  I don't know why a lack of wonder isn't listed as a mental illness in the DSM-V.  I don't know why our hearts don't stop beating when we are not filled with awe. How can one not be surprised?  How does one survive without child-like curiosity? Do you know that even now there are still hundreds of new species identified each year?  And each answer discovered and declared by physicists produces new questions braided into the quantum mysteries.
There is so much wonder to behold.
If what we can observe and experience is beyond our capacity to fully embrace and understand, why would we believe the Creator is a limiting, mean-spirited, stingy and punitive God? Who would give a sixteen year old boy a new, super-turbo Mustang and say "drive ten miles under the speed limit at all times"? If we are given limitations, then it is for protection, not for prohibition.
If I didn't know any other way, then looking at the wonder around me and within me, I would surmise a loving and generous Creator.  Why else give us such a playground and the ability to wonder?  We are so loved!

© Stephen Carl