Most people don’t get to live extraordinary lives, at least not the way we tend to think of extraordinary. We look at our jobs and our homes and our friends, and it is all so ordinary. There’s nothing that sets us apart from anyone else, not like those missionaries in Africa witnessing to unreached tribes or that neighbor down the street who always seems to have the best the world can offer. The divide between us and them looks insurmountable sometimes, and perhaps it is.

But the gap between ordinary and extraordinary, on the other hand. . . that’s actually very small, small enough to be bridged by one little word.

Wonder.

Yes, wonder. Remember when you were an Indian on the warpath and the white men you captured wouldn’t cooperate as real captives should? Remember all those tea parties with little princess friends and sometimes even the queen of England? Remember turning stumps to bears and embroidery frames to halos? We all knew what it was to wonder once. The world was real, and it was alive, and we played a very big part in what that world became. But the older we get, the harder it is to hold onto that sense of wonder we had as children. So often, “real” life gets in the way. We can’t just imagine anymore. We have work to do, school to attend, families to feed.

We’re too busy to wonder. It doesn’t happen naturally anymore, not like when we were young. So make wonder a choice.

I hiked Smith Rock last summer with a group of friends, and before we actually started hiking, we came across a man who had a snake coiled around his arm. Right there, I had a choice: I could stay as far away as possible or I could take a closer look. Now there’s a part of me that’s always torn between the way girls are supposed to act and the way I actually want to act. In this case, my friend was already covering the girl side of things pretty completely, so I went with my side. And you know, once you decide in your head that something isn’t as gross as everyone makes it out to be, it can actually be pretty neat. Besides, I didn’t know when my next chance to touch a snake would come, and with those cool scales beneath my fingers I didn’t regret a thing. In fact, the only thing I regretted later was not asking the man if I could actually hold it.

That said though, I have no quibble with girls, or anyone at all really, who thinks snakes are disgusting and should be kept as far away from as possible. My point is that there’s a lot of things in life that we can get along just fine without experiencing, but we just might be depriving ourselves of some joy by doing so. There are so many sights and smells and sounds around us, and they really don’t have to affect us at all. We can ignore them and just focus on completing our day, or we can wonder at them and help ourselves out by letting them make our lives just a little brighter.

God gave us this whole, big, beautiful world. We might as well take the time to revel in it.

I babysit a darling little boy, and it just amazes me over and over again how wonder is not a choice to him. He can’t help it. The world is brand-new in those baby eyes, and everything is a curiosity. Everything matters. I’ve been in this world for twenty three years, but that doesn’t mean I’ve seen it all. Not even close. So what’s hindering my sense of wonder?

Quite a few things actually.

Pride: because everyone knows that wonder is childish.

Busyness: because the little bit of extra time that I could spare to make my world more beautiful might keep me from reaching my goal.

Boredom: because I’ve seen it all before.

But the stars don’t stop shining just because we’ve seen them every night of our lives. I was walking across a field at midnight, and the stars were absolutely incredible. I could’ve decided getting to the other end of the field where everyone else was was more important than looking at the stars once again, but I didn’t. Instead I stopped and just lost myself in them for a moment, and you know, they don’t get any less majestic from one night to the next.

This world doesn’t have to be some worn-out thing that you know like the back of your hand. Let it be new. Look at it as if you’re seeing it for the first time. You won’t regret smelling that wildflower or touching that snakeskin or just pausing to look at the stars.

I've found that so often it’s the littlest moments that could slip away so easily that become the greatest memories when we make the most of them. . .

. . . letting a wounded dragonfly perch on my finger
. . . getting drenched in the rain with my neighbor
. . . staying up crazy late talking with the sibs even though we all have work in the morning
. . . making glow-in-the-dark bubbles and blowing them off a balcony
. . . swinging a baby to sleep (or really just swinging in general)
. . . building marshmallow snowmen with my niece and nephews
. . . singing in the rain in the Dutch Bros. parking lot
. . . standing on the roof of a parking garage with the city lights spread out all around
. . . posing with shopping carts in a deserted parking lot for random pictures
. . . hitting glue-trapped mice over the head with a pop bottle to speed their otherwise drawn-out deaths
. . . singing “Angels We Have Heard on High” in a sky bridge
. . . and my current favorite . . . taking a salamander into church to show my friends

Life is beautiful if you let it be. Don’t let God’s wonders go to waste. Let life intrigue you. And even more, let it point you to the One from Whom it flows.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James 1:17