The Wonder Years

Why, in the busiest years, Wonder is most needed.

G.K. Chesterton has a famous quote: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

The first time I read that, it caught in my throat like a vitamin I hadn’t properly swallowed. In simple terms, Chesterton lands an unsettling observation that still hits us between the eyes today— Creation will never lack a rich and overflowing supply of wonder. What we do often lack, however, is the desire, willingness, and ability to notice it. Between you and me, parenting exposes this in me more than almost anything else. It has a way of compressing life into the immediate, with the urgent always pulling focus.

• Dinner needs to be made.
• Homework needs to be checked.
• Someone needs a ride.
• “Will there be drinking at the party?”
• Shoot, I forgot to get milk…
• “Hey! Quit. Be nice to your brother, I’m serious!”

When you’re in the thick of “The Years” — aka the kids-at-home years — time feels like trying to grasp water falling from a faucet. You clamp your hands around the stream, but no matter how hard you to try to catch it, it just keeps slipping through your fingers. Days stack on days until suddenly a year has passed and you’re not sure how it happened so quickly. You tell yourself you’re SURE you’ll remember the way they told that one story at dinner. Or the exact sound of their voice at twelve. Or the look on their face when something extraordinary finally clicked. But so much of it passes while we’re busy keeping life running. Which is, I think, exactly what Chesterton was pointing at.

Wonders are never missing. Our attunement to them is. Here’s what strikes me about that when I read the Gospels: Jesus didn’t perform miracles in quiet, controlled environments. He did them in the middle of crowds. At dinner tables. Along dusty roads. In the chaos of ordinary life— in moments where people were already distracted by a hundred other things happening. Every miracle was an interruption. And the people watching did the only thing they could do: they stopped. They looked at each other. And then someone finally said It— Who is this? The miracles woke people up. They were, in a sense, invitations back into wonder. I think our homes can work the same way— but only if we slow down enough to notice.

The Conversation Kit on Miracles from Axis is a resource that was designed to help you open up exactly these kinds of conversations. Let it invite curiosity into your home. And ask the question Who is this? Together—around your own dinner table. These years are hard and fast and full, and you are doing something that matters more than it usually feels like it does. Remember: the miracles of Jesus didn’t happen in quiet, controlled spaces. They happened in the middle of ordinary life. Which means they can happen in the middle of yours, too.

“Let’s not become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary.” —Galatians 6:9

(Written by Brie Naughton and The Axis Team)