From Why to Wonder
Wonder is a beautiful thing. It positions us to ask questions, to look for possibilities. Kids are great at wondering - 4 year olds specifically. Once they move past the stage of asking WHY a million times a day, they start to do more wondering. There’s a maturity, when a child moves from asking why, to wondering about possibilities. You see it in the way they experiment and tell stories. You see it in the way they test boundaries, and when a usually honest child suddenly starts lying. Sometimes it’s big important things, sometimes it’s insignificant lies that are clearly not true. What’s happening is that they are engaging wonder! They’re developing their imagination muscle, using their brains in a new way to picture a different outcome.
While it’s a real challenge to parent through this phase, there’s something we can learn from them. We should pay attention to that maturation from WHY to WONDER. It’s the same in our relationship with God - we often want to ask why. Why is this happening to me? Why aren’t you stopping this? Why is that thing not coming together? These are honest questions but they rarely have satisfying answers. What if we approached the same circumstances with wonder? What if, instead of demanding answers from God about things we don’t understand, we imagined new possibilities together with Him?
Do you see what I just did there? I used wonder to introduce you to the idea of wonder. It’s that easy, that subtle. You can shift from Why to Wonder just by asking a new question. “What would happen if” is a great tool to get unstuck. I’ve found, in my own experiences that the enemy wants me to be convinced that I don’t have options. He wants us to feel like we are backed into a corner and can do nothing but retaliate. Fight back. Eye for an eye. But wonder makes us actually turn around and see what the options really are. It makes us see that there are multiple routes we could take, that our back is not in a corner but actually facing an open field.
God always has more possibilities than we can see.
Just a few minutes ago, I was sitting in a cafe here in Kampala, Uganda. I felt like God was telling me to get up and walk, so I stopped writing, packed up my things and started walking. I figured I would walk towards the mall, and a man was walking the same direction and almost bumped into me. We said hello, and then he asked me where I’m from. I told him I’m from Canada, from BC. He said ah, he has a friend from Canada but they are from a different place called Winnipeg. Interestingly enough, that’s where I grew up! He told me the name of his friend, and I immediately recognized it as a pastor I once knew. What are the chances?! Then the man asks if I’m a believer, and he starts to cry. You see, this joyful young man saying a friendly hello on the street had just had all his belongings stolen out of his dorm where he was attending training school. His friend from Winnipeg is the man who paid for his school fees. He was trying to get home so he could sell his pigs, in order to buy another laptop, so he won’t be kicked out of school. To do this, he has slept on the street the night before and was praying for a way to get the equivalent of about $30 to buy a bus ticket home. I asked him his name, and then asked what it meant. No joke here friends, his name means “give”. Sometimes I think God overcommunicates! Haha, ok I’ll give Lord. I bought my new friend lunch as he hadn’t eaten in a couple days, and gave him the money for the ticket. As I handed him the cash, his phone rang and a friend was calling because they felt God telling them to pray for him, and asked if he was ok. He was able to testify through tears about what God had just done!
This man had no options, no way of coming up with the money. He could’ve chosen despair, he could’ve given up or tried to run away from his problems. He could’ve been angry at God, demanding to know why this tragedy had happened to him. But instead, he chose wonder. He chose to get up this morning and say I wonder what God will do today? I wonder what will happen if I smile and say hello to a stranger?
I’ve been on a missions trip for the past 3 months, preaching and teaching the Bible in Africa. It’s been a really challenging experience, but one of the things I am taking home with me is a sense of wonder. I’m choosing to look for possibilities every day, to believe that I have many options in front of me. What is a place where you need to activate wonder in your life?
