It is difficult to linger in wonder and awe. But we must do it. As in all marriages and close friendships, familiarity can sometimes breed flippancy. Sometimes, when we are too close to the exquisiteness of creation, we take it for granted, and we lose the Designer in the design.
The closer one’s profession leads them into the mysteries of creation, the more they are expected to distance themselves from the idea of a creator. It is not in vogue to approach science with humility and openness. We need to normalize wonder and curiosity in regular conversation as a means to actively seek the “renewal of our minds.”
It is the lofty task of the Christian to live in such a way as to make everyone consider God’s existence. It is fitting and necessary that we constantly feed our wonder by feasting upon the beauty of God. We need constant reminders of God’s care for us and his attention to the minute details that daily delight us.
When we swim in deep water, do we consider ourselves to be held by it? When the sun warms our face on a winter day, do we consider that the tiniest adjustment to the earth’s position would mean destruction for life on earth?
In his book The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet, Father Thomas Dubay writes about the exquisite marvels of nature and how the only sane posture is reverence.
“Our earth’s atmosphere has been called a miracle. One of its traits is the composition of the air we breathe. If its makeup included 17 percent oxygen, we could not breathe at all; if it were 25 percent, we would burn up. It actually is 21 percent, exactly what we need. If the mass of our largest planet Jupiter were one percent greater or less than it actually is, our solar system would be destabilized, and again we could not exist.”
As people of faith, how fitting it is to offer God a humble and contrite spirit on behalf of the world. How much more of our folly do we need to see before we turn back to the Lord? The beauty and majesty of the earth and everything in it has been given to us as an obscenely generous gift; one that speaks to us of our identity and also of our homeland.
The world thinks that if it turns a blind eye to God, he will turn a blind eye to all its sins and misdeeds. As if we were trying to hide out like Adam and Eve in the garden after the Fall. As if humanity and the Creator could mutually agree to coexist without any points of intersection.
In his book The Brothers Karamazov, one of Dostoyevsky’s characters states that “to live without God is torture … man cannot live without kneeling … if he rejects God, he kneels before an idol of wood or gold or an imaginary one … they are all idolaters and not atheists. That’s what they ought to be called.”
Dubay writes that the more we have things in the right order, the more we will be awake to reality.
“Wonder at reality demands the humility to sit at the foot of a dandelion. The proud are so full of themselves that there is little room to marvel at anything else. Saints are typically awestruck at an insect, a flower, a star because they are burning with love and rooted in a perceiving honesty. That is, they are humble [...] The keenest perception of reality and a consequent wonder require purity of mind and heart, much as do the lenses of microscopes and telescopes.”
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