One of the best novels I have read in recent years is Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. It’s the story of an astronaut who develops a rich and wonderful friendship with an alien life form he calls Rocky. Both characters are marked by a deep and insatiable curiosity. One of Rocky’s common responses to learning something new is to shout “Amaze! Amaze!” Part of what makes the story so satisfying is the way in which Rocky in particular is marked by a contagious and life-giving sense of awe and wonder at what the universe has to offer.

Our reading from Acts 2 for this Sunday describes how in the early days of the Christian community after Pentecost, “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.” The first followers of Jesus were marked, not just by communal love, or commitment to justice and mercy, but by amazement at what is possible through the power of God. The story in Acts is driven by a pulsing, palpable spiritual energy that makes everything that occurs possible.

In the modern western world, we’ve largely lost touch with that pulsing, palpable spiritual energy. Our capacity for awe and wonder—to be amazed—has largely atrophied. We regard claims of the miraculous with cynicism, we tend to frown with internal suspicion at the parts of the Bible or the creeds that seem too strange. We tend to view everything—from our work, to our relationships, to the earth itself, through a largely transactional lens, where everything and everyone is reduced to a consideration of “what do I get out of this?”

So much of the injustice, suffering, and oppression all around us is born from this tendency to see everything through the lens of how it benefits me. Following Jesus is about learning to see everything and everyone as possessing inherent and unchangeable worth because it is infused with the holiness of the God the creator of all.

And the capacity to stand in awe at a world infused with the holiness of God is not only the domain of ancient apostles, but is available to each of us in every moment. On one of the first real days of Spring this year, I was walking my dog in the evening as I always do. It’s a chore I often resent, and usually I’m just trying to get it over as fast as I can. On this occasion, I veered from our regular route for no conscious reason and walked down to the shore of the lake we live by. The setting sun had turned the surface of the newly thawed water about a thousand different colors. It was extraordinary, and I just stood there in silence for a long time, just being there. The frustrations of the day, and my resentment of the task at hand, melted away as everything narrowed to the gift of that moment.

In a world being torn apart by a soul-crushing, quid pro quo thinking, cultivating awe and wonder is an act of resistance and revolution. When the situation in the world, the challenges of your life, and the buzz of constant distraction feel like such a heavy yoke, take a moment to look up, to notice the buds beginning to burst on the trees, to really see the person you love, to allow yourself to laugh, to feel the living Spirit moving through the fabric of all things, and let your life be an infectious cry of “Amaze! Amaze!” that helps set the whole world free.

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