September 10, 2025

The poet Archibald MacLeish has a poem titled “With Age Wisdom.” It goes like this:

At twenty stooping round about,
I thought the world a miserable place,
Truth a trick, faith in doubt,
Little beauty, less grace.

Now at sixty what I see,
Although the world is worse by far,
Stops my heart in ecstasy.
God, the wonders that there are!

I turned sixty this year. My sixty-year-old vision is vastly different from my twenty-year-old vision. Yes, now I can declare, “God, the wonders that there are!” The rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.” Wonder, truly a gift from the divine God.

Over and over again, the Psalmist declares the wonders of God’s creation, writing, “We are wonderfully made.” [139:14] We, the wonderful creatures we are, are made for wonder. I am in wonder as the season moves from summer to my favorite season of fall. I celebrate in wonder the maturation of the gardens which Elizabeth has created and tended at our home. The flowers have flowered in their season, bringing different colors and shapes into life; a wonder.

There are also moments when my wonder slumbers. I acquiesce to the pull of routine, doing my best to make it through the humdrum business and activities of the day, veiled to the marvel that there is something instead of nothing. Perhaps, to pull myself out, I need to ask myself, “Is it not a wonder that I can slip into not wondering?” (Ah, the wonder of using a double negative!)

What are you wondering at on this day?

Rev. Eric