There’s a song by the artist Carrie Newcomer called Impossible, Until It’s Not. The opening line is one that gets stuck in my head all the time:
“Engineers say bumblebees can’t fly / their wings are too short / And their bodies too wide / But there one goes a wandering by / It happens all the time”
The theme of the song is pretty obvious – don’t stop because something seems impossible – but what also stands out to me is the awe we could have for the world around us. After seeing probably hundreds of bumblebees in my lifetime, the surprise of seeing this large insect hover in the air has worn off. But reconsidering a bumblebee (even without seeing one) does spark that surprise again.
What happens if I can recapture that wonder of so many remarkable things around me? For example, this week I stopped to consider the fact that Lake Monona next to our apartment freezes over and that we can walk across it. It made me pause as I took a step out onto the ice. I still have that element of wonder, or I revived it.
If I do this more often, how might my view of the “everyday” world change for the better? Could that be an exercise in finding God in new ways?