Week #4 Noticing and Responding to God’s Glory
All human beings have been exposed to God’s glory and beauty—things that ought to evoke wonder. All continue to be exposed to his glory. Not all respond the same way.
The reverent person can see beyond their subjective horizon, not always asking, “What is satisfying for me?” They can leave behind narrowness and abandon themselves to that which is important in itself–the beautiful, the good–and subordinates themselves to it. This capacity to perceive moral values can be found only in a person who possesses reverence.
--Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living
Wonder
“Wonder is a distinctively human response to reality, one marked by a deep sense of astonishment, admiration, and awe.”
We wonder at the mind-boggling immensity of the Grand Canyon below or the starry expanse above… at the moral clarity of a friend shaped by great suffering…
When we are gripped by wonder, we are startled out of the ordinary and humdrum of human experience.
“Wonder can indicate to us that we are in the presence of something truly excellent and worthy of our sustained attention. Wonder is also a window through which we can see reality in its proper light; what is genuinely good, true, and beautiful—and worth pursuing—tends to evoke wonder. Wonder propels us beyond the confines of our small, narrow selves and into a much bigger and weightier orbit of reality, into the true depths of things.
--Ross D. Inman, Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder
Anne Porter’s poem “Music”
J.R.R. Tolkien: “We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile. --The Letters of Tolkien
George Herbert’s “The Pulley”
“Joy is an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. It must be sharply distinguished both from happiness and from pleasure. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge. --Psalm 19:1,2
Pleasures are “shafts of [God’s] glory as it strikes our sensibility… --C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (122-123).
C.S. Lewis’s mind was above all characterized by an openness to delight, to the sense that there’s more to the world than meets the jaundiced eye. In most children, but in relatively few adults, we see a willingness to be delighted to the point of self-abandonment.
Why do we lose the ability to give ourselves in this way?
Perhaps adolescence introduces the fear of being deceived, the fear of being caught believing in what others have ceased to believe. To be naive, to be gullible—these are the great humiliations of adolescence.
When we can no longer be "wide open to the glory," we have lost not just our childlikeness, but also something near the core of our humanity. Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss. (Alan Jacobs, The Narnian)
God’s invisible attributes… have been clearly perceived, in the things that have been made. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:20-23)
"The world will never starve for a want of wonders;
but only for a want of wonder."-- G.K. Chestert
Though you’ve been exposed to the glory and beauty of God, it’s very possible to undervalue your exposure to wonder and beauty. You can be in the presence of God’s glory and be value-blind due to “irreverence”, as the quote at the top of the page suggested.
For Next Week
What is your “wonder story?” Do you find it difficult to open yourself to wonder?
What might help you increase your capacity for wonder?
Here’s a few of my ideas about how to increase the capacity for wonder:
https://markbair.substack.com/p/8-ways-to-cultivate-a-greater-capacity
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