From the Editors June 23, 2014 Issue

Ready to be amazed?

The Editors

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote recently about the “vein of hostility” against orthodox religious believers in the United States today, especially among the young. He pointed to the “yawning gap between the way many believers experience faith and the way that faith is presented to the world” (“Alone, Yet Not Alone,” January 28, 2014).

Brooks quoted one experience of faith shared by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book God in Search of Man: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement … get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal. ... To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Of course, amazement is nothing new in the life of Spirit, where the reality of God’s infinite goodness and healing power has always been phenomenal, as is recorded in many well-loved Bible accounts, especially in the New Testament.

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