Wonder, amazement and awe even in modern times

I am writing this devotion on a computer with a word processor that is so advanced that my grandparents would be amazed. This processor can fix my misspelled words, warn me of grammatical errors, and I can go back and fix mistakes without making a mess of my document. It truly is amazing.

I am so thankful to live in the modern world. I so appreciate the creature comforts, modern health care methods, and the scientific discoveries that our modern world has made available to us. It is beyond dispute that modernity has made our lives so much easier. Science and technology have brought us so many advances that have made my life so much easier than my parents'. My life today is even easier than it was just a few years ago.

However, modernity has stolen something significant from us. Science has attempted to answer every question. Some modern scientists even go so far as to say that science can answer every question. However, in its attempt to answer those questions, explain every mystery, and fix everything, it has left us void of wonder. In the end, we lost the ability to look on something with awe, wonder and amazement.

Every morning and evening, like a child, I gaze into the east and western skies at the masterpieces that God paints for us in the form of sunrises and sunsets. They are marvelous and wonderful expressions of God’s creative ability. However marvelous they may appear to be, modernity tells us that they are nothing but a set of scientific principles that deal with the refraction of light. A scientist can explain to us in the minutest detail what a sunset is and why it looks the way it does. In so doing, however, the mystery and the wonder of the sunrise is taken away. We are left with a bunch of principles and laws that are not very impressive. However, this is still One Who lies beyond every sunset, Who put every one of those laws and principles into place.

With the rise of modernity, there are few places that remain where we can go to find wonder, amazement and awe. There is one place, however, where we can always go and be amazed, and that place is to worship. When we enter into worship, we enter into the world of awe and wonder. We enter into the world that is beyond the realm of any scientist to explain. We enter the world of the metaphysical and the supernatural. When our lives become predictable and mundane, we need worship, and restore the mystery and wonder of God and all that He has created.

How I pity those who have nothing to give their lives meaning other than the things of this world that will be taken from them. Or those who worship the explainable laws of science that offer them no wonder or amazement. They may look to something to give their lives meaning, but that object they are looking to is incapable of giving true objective meaning. However, the Christian can look at the beauty of a sunset and understand that it can be explained by scientific principles, but also understand that there is still an artist behind that beautiful painting.

We can acknowledge the beauty of science, while at the same time confess with St. Augustine, “The weakness of my tongue confesses to your majesty, that you made heaven and earth” (Augustine, 1986, p. 251), or of King David, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).