Editorial November 4, 1985 Issue

The real wonder in life

WILLIAM E. MOODY

Thoughtful Christians have expressed concern that the world today seems too easily impressed by too much that isn't really substantial. Consider the somewhat less than awe-inspiring quality of what sometimes try to pass as "miracles" in contemporary society—everything from the young boy who bought his grandfather a winning lottery ticket on Father's Day to the athlete who claims divine intervention won the game in the final sixty seconds. (If this is the nature of modern-day miracles—if God is picking lottery numbers and scoring touchdowns—it could seem that the losers simply don't know the right prayers, or else they file their requests too late!)

There are indeed lots of claims to the wonderful, but when we look carefully at such "amazing" claims, we find that they just don't pass the test. The reality of God's goodness is not a shallow whim or happenstance. And if too many people today tend to marvel at too much that isn't truly wonderful, there must certainly be a need to renew a deeper sense of genuine wonder.

Shouldn't it be those things which touch our heart and move our spirit that fill us with wonder? As Christian Science teaches, it is what our spiritual sense can discern of the beauty or grace or joy all around us that is worth cherishing and worth our wonder. And there's a promise of even greater wonder that we glimpse when we accept the possibility that life is more than a random series of events and so much more substantial than the temporal circumstances of mortality.

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