Wonder! Galaxies & GK Chesterton

Image: Dead Star Creates Celestial Havoc
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A friend gave me a book on his intellectual hero, GK Chesterton. I know his poems, but he's like the author and thinker I was waiting to discover! The first chapter I flipped to was titled "Wonder," my favourite concept!

Chesterton, a larger-than-life London journalist who wrote memorably in the early 20th century, said of wonder:

"The function of imagination is... not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders."

"A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of five is excited by bein told that Tommy opened a door."

My high-spirited unstoppable nephew Caleb is five. The world is new and wondrous to him, even the littlest things. This early waker popped into my room one morning. I told him my new alarm clock would chime soon. A ho-hum everyday moment? Caleb's eyes widened and his mouth formed a surprised O in the half-light when the tinkling tune began.

One of my best Bible Studies highlighted Jacob and his dream of the stairway to Heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it. (Genesis 28:10-15). It didn't matter that his pillow was a rock and he was a fugitive. Wonder can still be our experience in woeful circumstances. We're alive to possibilities!

In my life, God embedded a special wonder when I was five or six. I was lying on the grass on Fort Canning Hill and suddenly I became aware of stars and infinity in the early evening sky. The Creator of the galaxies is also an intimate God who pursues us in love. We and the cosmos fall down in worship before God.