Wonder: Rediscovering Childlike Awe

Sunday Awe

We began the year with the mystery of God, and we now end the year as we began—wrapped in awe, steeped in mystery, returning full circle to the beginning. But something is different, we are not the same. The journey has changed us—not by giving us all the answers, but by expanding our hearts to hold the questions. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

We are not called to mastery mystery, but to be intimate with it—to dwell not in certainty, but in childlike wonder. Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

Children do not come with answers, they ask questions. They live in wonder of what is. They laugh at butterflies, chase falling leaves, and sit in spellbound awe at fireworks exploding. Everything is new. Everything is mysterious. This is not immaturity. It is the doorway to growth.

Gregory of Nyssa, in Homilies on the Song of Songs, said: “At the heart of each thing, there is something that is not understood, and that is what evokes wonder.”

Wonder is not a detour from spiritual maturity—it is the path. Dogma seeks to explain; awe invites us to experience. Dogma closes the door; wonder throws it open again. Wonder asks not, “What do I know?” but “Who is this God who knows me?”

Too often, language fails to articulate the deepest truths. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite said, “The more we rise toward the heights of the divine darkness, the more speech ceases, and the more our minds are wrapped in the formless, the ineffable.” (Mystical Theology, Chapter 1). This is wonder.

“At the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)

This final meditation of the year is not an end, but a return—a homecoming to the childlike awe we once knew. It is a reminder that the sacred is not hidden in lofty answers, but revealed in simple attentiveness. To gaze at a sunrise. To hear your own breath. To laugh freely. To cry honestly. To love deeply. This is worship. This is wonder.

Let us not seek to solve the mystery, but to live inside it. May wonder be your companion in the coming year. May awe open your eyes, soften your heart, and lead you again and again to the One who is always beyond and yet always near.

Live in Wonder, rediscovering childlike AWE:

Aware. Gently observe something ordinary—a flame, a leaf, a child—and let it awaken wonder in you.
Wonder. Contemplate the beauty of mystery. Let go of needing answers.
Engage. Enter the new year not with resolutions, but with awe.

“Glory to You, O Lord, for the wonder of Your ways, for the awe of Your presence, for the joy of being alive in You.” (Anonymous, early Christian hymn)

(Wonder, by author with ChatGPT, 2025)

Monday Awe: The Gift of Wonder

St. Augustine: “The greatest gift is to stand in awe of the Creator, who made all things.” (Confessions)
Thomas Merton: “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and to marvel at their being.” (No Man Is an Island)
Rumi: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.” (Masnavi)
The Upanishads 2.1.1: “The wise see with eyes of wonder, for all things are filled with the divine spark.”
Psalm 8:3-4: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (NIV)