What occupies your mind? Gazing Upwards and Learning to Wonder.

Gaze. The lifting of our head in awe and wonder. We do not gaze enough. Our lives are full of clutter, our hearts too full of ourselves.

I used to gaze in wonder as a child, watching the wonder of a sunrise, or the beauty of a rainbow. I still gaze now and again, especially when I see an eagle soaring above me, or at some unique flower growing out of the cement (yes where I stay now gives me this privilege).

But if I’m honest with you, I find it harder to stop and gaze now then when I was a child. Life comes with its worries and baggage and tries to pull me down. I no longer look at my yummy meal and savour every bite of it, in fact I am usually multitasking on the phone. I no longer find rain intriguing, in fact I sometimes consider it a nuisance.

I still remember a scene from Chronicles of Narnia, where Lucy talks with her older sister Susan by the stream. At one point the conversation went towards how Susan had changed as she went into adulthood,

Susan: ‘Sorry. We used to have fun together didn’t we?’

Lucy: ‘Yeah, until you became boring!’

C.S LEWIS, CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

Boring. Yes. Boring. As we age we possibly become more boring. Or rather we become so bogged down and bored at life. We have lost our ability to notice let alone gaze on what really matters.

But what remedy do we have for that?

This might come as a jolt to some, but I think one of the best remedy for a heart that has lost its gaze and sense of wonder is to – stop looking at ourselves.

Ouch.

I mean, think for a second, all those worries, perceived stress and clutter, often comes from us being overly occupied in our own world. We worry about what people think about us forgetting what our Creator might think. We pursue comfort and riches forgetting the riches of nature. We analyse our feelings of anger, replaying them again and again in our head.

I’ve come to realise that the problem often is not that we do not gaze, but that we gaze at the wrong things in life as we grow older.

Today, why not fix your gaze on the beauty around you? Why not fall into a little bit of selflessness? Why not try to quite complaining and instead, be grateful for the little?

And I dare you, why not take some time to gaze upon the Creator of the Universe, allowing God to take His rightful place? Allowing everything else to fall into perspective. You just might find that He has been gazing at you all this while.