When was the last time you felt overcome with wonder? Holding a newborn baby? Or how about a moment when you were mysteriously protected in a car crash? Or a realization that you or someone you love had been miraculously healed?

Maybe those kinds of things are too rare.

It could be something more commonplace—a painted pink and purple sunset splashed around a rising moon. Or maybe when some quiet person at work cracks a really funny joke.

Somehow, wonderment fades as we get older. It begins to elude us. Nothing new under the sun…been there, done that. We gradually approach life with dull hearts. A light goes out.

Young children, on the other hand, live in a constant state of wonder. I remember sitting for nearly an hour watching my young granddaughter discover the substance of water in the bathtub. Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t her first bath.

I’d given her a small plastic bottle to play with. Over and over and over, she filled the bottle with water, watching the bubbles escape as they popped and sputtered. And if bubbles weren’t fascinating enough, there was more! Slowly, she poured out the water in a thin stream, making a different kind of sound and then studied how the clear substance vanished into the rest of the bath.

Water! Utterly captivating.

My friend Robin had a teacher who wanted to expand the young minds of her students by giving them a concept of what a million looks like. The teacher said if anyone could make a million marks on paper, their grade would go up a level. Continue reading