“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”

– Abraham Joshua Heschel

So come to find out the sun is humongous. Like really big.

I mean, the earth alone is unimaginably large. Just last year scientists discovered a remote part of the Amazon rainforest that people had never been to before and found 258 new species of plants, 84 new kinds of fish, 22 new reptiles, 18 undocumented birds, and 1 new mammal (it’s a monkey that purrs like a cat when it is happy). How crazy that we’ve lived on this planet for thousands and thousands of years and haven’t even seen the whole thing yet!

A few days ago I walked from Zeeland to Holland (about 7 miles) and it took for-ev-er. As long as my exhausting walk took, the distance registers less than the diameter of a grain of sand on google maps, even when just looking at little ol’ Michgian. My fist thought was that Lewis and Clarke must have been insane. My second thought was something along the lines of, Whoa, Earth is a beast.

But as massively massive as planet Earth is, my brain pooped its pants when I was told that the sun is an estimated million times bigger. A million times bigger?!?!…what?

Does it seem just a little humorous to anyone else that there is giant ball one million times bigger than our entire planet floating in our sight all day long—oh, and did I mention that the massive sphere is basically on fire!—and no one even acts like this is unusual?

Pardon me…PAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WHAT?! If my brain had a diaper it would currently be full. I mean, a million times bigger than earth?! What does that even mean?

When you stop to think about it, everything is pretty much awesome. A few weeks ago I started making a list of amazing things that I’d been taking for granted all my life. Here is a little snippet:

– Everything in my house came from the earth. The toaster, the lamp, the television—all these things came from the ground and are only in their current form after a complicated and precise series of processes and exchanges. It’s like Adam and Eve were given the earth and a piece of paper saying “some assembly required” and here we are today with skyscrapers and jet skis like they magically fell from the sky.

– How the human body works. I’ve had one my whole life and still have no clue what’s going on. My brain works without my telling it to. My heart beats without my telling it to. My eyes see without my telling them to. The whole thing is one astonishing compilation of cells, organs…cells…and I think other stuff too (my biological knowledge is slightly limited ☺).

– People get so excited over 3D movies, apparently forgetting that life was already 3D to begin with though nobody seemed to notice.

The more you think about it the more you start to realize that everything is awesome, and strange, and unexplainable. Here is where the gift comes in. Wonder is essentially having eyes to see. Wonder means living with the conviction that everything connects to everything else. Wonder is going to the border of things imaginable and placing your palms against your brain’s boundaries to feel the warmth of God’s breath on the other side.

This is a valuable gift because there aren’t many folks with wide-open eyes. Not only will wonder make you a visionary in the dullness of everyday, but more importantly, it will become a wellspring of worship swelling up and over in your life. Oh, and I almost forgot, it will make school way less boring.