“There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.” – G.K. Chesterton
I got my first pair of glasses at around 23 years of age. I had been noticing tension in my neck and shoulders as well as increasing headaches after long hours of graduate school reading. At my mom’s suggestion, I went in for an eye exam. It turns out my eyesight had worsened to the point that I needed glasses. Two weeks after visiting the optometrist and taking the eye exam with the phoropter (that mask-like contraption that cycles through various lenses while the optometrist asks, “Which is better, 1 or 2?”), I went to pick up my first pair of glasses.
I walked outside and was stunned at the difference they made! Indistinct, green tree canopies now splintered into thousands of distinct leaves. Stop signs with white-on-red letter blobs now popped as clear white letters with crisp edges. The vaguely blurred world I had slowly gotten used to suddenly was sharp and clear!
As humans, we’re pretty good at appreciating the Big, the Impressive, and the Dramatic—it appears that we’re hard wired for it. And as California residents, we’re fed a steady stream of blockbuster movie releases, glitzy musical performances, and GOAT-worthy sports competitions that can turn us into reflexive junkies in search of the Next Big Thing. This makes it possible, or even likely, that we will miss the everyday miracles in our midst. Flowers in a riot of colors barely catch our eye. A hummingbird hovering next to a window barely registers. A child messily exploring a patch of dirt becomes an irritant rather than an opportunity to be curious together.
In our new sermon series, titled “Hidden Wonders,” I’m inviting us to reflect on a variety of simple yet profoundly powerful phenomena that exist all around us. G.K. Chesterton once observed that “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” Chesterton implies that that appreciation, not novelty, is what we lack. Our world is full of beauty and everyday miracles but often our ability to see and appreciate them is severely diminished, like someone who’s eyesight is in such slow decline that they don’t even realize what they no longer see.
Sometimes, what we most need is to take a beat, observe, reflect, and appreciate. We could all use the occasional curiosity boost to help us overcome a dull and desensitized view of life and to truly see. I pray that this sermon series may give us a new prescription to help us see more clearly, appreciate more profoundly, and celebrate more gratefully the hidden wonders all around us.
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