Our wonder-full world

'The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.' Christian journalist GK Chesterton is mostly famous today for dozens of 'Instagrammable' quotes about thankfulness, all from his outlook on life - that the world is a surprise, a wild and startling place that might have been different. For him the world was still a place of wonder and enormous emotions, even though massively broken. A place that could have been made greyer, flatter, duller, but wasn't.

Chesterton gives us a way to understand today's verse... 'In everything give thanks' (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NKJV). Thankfulness is not a button we press in response to one-off nice things; it's the wonder of experiencing the whole world. It's a pair of glasses we put on that say: 'I choose to see this all as a gift.' It's not surface-level: it goes right into the depths of human experience.

There are many painful life experiences or long stretches of character-forming dullness that won't get a 'like' on Facebook. But when we see the world as a gift (not just a world full of miracles, but a miraculous world), and a gift from a Giver who has our best interests in mind, then wonder is free to cast around on everything that comes our way. Then we can 'in everything give thanks', knowing that God brings good into even the hardest situations.



So what now? As you walk around today, notice things you'd usually walk right past. What can you wonder at, thankfully?





— SCRIPTURE —

'In everything give thanks.' 1 Thessalonians 5:18 NKJV
— SOULFOOD —

1 Sam 16-17, Matt 23:1-12, Ps 64, Pro 16:27-30