I’ve been wondering about wonder. It seems there are two parts to wonder. There’s the curiosity part: “I wonder how?” And then there’s the awe part: “How wonderful!”
It’s possible that curiosity and awe are two distinct definitions of the word wonder, but I suspect they go hand in hand. If we aren’t curious, we’ll never look to see what’s around the corner. And we’ll never be awestruck by something we can’t see.
You might suggest that, at times, we can experience wonder without looking for it, without curiosity. Sometimes it surprises us. That may be true. But I wonder if, by being curious, we might find it far more often. We might even find it in the most ordinary things, like steam rising from a mug or the pair of eyes we see every day in the mirror.
The Old Testament story of Job gets into this matter. At the beginning of the story, his life is great. But then all sorts of terrible things happen to him. His children die, his wife curses him, his health plummets. It is then that he becomes curious. “Why is this happening to me?”
However, Job takes his questioning too far. Instead of remaining curious about things, he demands answers.
In contrast to his demand for answers, Job’s friends don’t ask questions at all. Instead, they tell him why these terrible things must have happened to him. They don’t wonder, they assume. They cling to simplistic explanations, ignoring the mystery and complexity of life.
Between Job and his friends, we see two forces that destroy curiosity, and therefore wonder. Job’s experience of wonder is inhibited by his demand for answers. His friends’ experiences of wonder are inhibited by their assumptions.
Curiosity, by contrast, is neither a demand for answers nor an assumption of the answers. It’s asking questions while remaining open to mystery. And it’s the mysterious things that leave us in awe. It’s the unknown that makes us wonder and leaves us with a feeling of wonder. Neither Job nor his friends seem to understand this.
No matter. God replies to Job’s demands. But He doesn’t give him answers. He doesn’t tell him why terrible things have happened to him. Instead, He asks Job questions that Job cannot answer, questions he can only wonder at. Through some of the most beautiful poetry, God opens Job’s heart to the awesomeness of wonder.
He asks, “Where were you when I founded the earth?”
If Job wasn’t struck with wonder in that very moment, no problem. God had plenty more questions for Job to ponder. These are some of my favorites:
“Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb; when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”
Chapter 38, Verses 8-11
“Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?”
Chapter 38, Verse 12
“Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt?”
Chapter 38, Verse 25
God’s answer is one big, beautiful poem that essentially says, “Wonder.” It says, you were not the one who gave everything in the universe its form, its boundaries, its place, its beauty. You are the one who has been given it as a gift. You cannot know all the answers. You can demand to know, you can pretend to know, or you can wonder. The path that opens your heart to the experience of beauty, reality, and goodness is wonder.
So perhaps, by cultivating curiosity, we can open ourselves to awe. By asking questions without demanding answers, by being present to mystery, we might find wonder, even in the ordinary. We might find it in the similarity between the words pain and rain, or we might find it in a sprinkled donut. We might, like Job, be invited into a deeper understanding of life’s mysteries, not through explanations, but through the gift of wonder itself.
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