The Power of Wonder Part 6
April 26, 2026
The Power of Wonder Part 6
“Wonder Bread” was born from wonder itself. At the International Balloon Race in the early 1920s, Elmer Cline stood beneath a sky alive with color with hundreds of hot air balloons rising, drifting, and shimmering. He was awe-struck. That single moment of astonishment didn’t just pass; it imprinted on him. It gave birth to a name, an image, even a national product. Wonder became something people could hold in their hands.
But the real story is not about bread. It is about what wonder and awe do to us.
To be awe-struck is to be pierced by something greater than the ordinary. It is to encounter beauty, mystery, or magnitude so profound that our boundaries give way. For a moment, we do not analyze… we receive. We do not control; we stand open; we become one with what awes us.
I remember my first airplane flight at nine years old. We boarded at night. I slept. And then awakened to a wondrous morning outside my window. I looked out and downward and the world below: tiny roads, miniature cars, smallness everywhere. “So this is what we look like from heaven,” I thought. “Like toys.” The world was no longer what I thought it was… huge and overwhelming but also miniature and toy-like. And I have never quite seen the world as overwhelming again. Even now on flights, I frequently choose the window seat, hoping to touch that wonder once more.
There have been many such moments. Gazing into the vastness of the Grand Canyon. Backpacking to a Norwegian fjord and in my mind’s eye, seeing Viking sailing ships. Then there was the time I went to a real live flea circus. Amazing! Then there was the absolute wonder of falling in love. Once at age 13, I received a letter from a boy my age who found a message in a bottle I had thrown into the ocean four years earlier, when I was nine years old. Jacques Lepicard found the bottle on the coast of France nearly 5,000 miles away from where I threw it. I am awestruck by the small device in my chest that keeps my heart in rhythm. Even the quiet, sacred moments are awe-striking to me. All the way from the fiords time, I heard and sang along to Kum ba ya at summer camp to when, in college, I first sensed the still, small voice. Then there were the many times I was carried through what I thought would break my heart. Each one left its wondrous mark.
That is the hidden power of awe: it transforms. It loosens the grip of what we think is real and opens us to what is possible. Awe does not simply amaze us; it remakes us. And perhaps that is why we are given these moments.
Spiritual practice: Recall a moment that left you awestruck. Sit with it. Let it come alive again. Notice not just what you saw—but how you were changed.
Self-inquiry: How did your first experience of awe reshape your sense of reality? What became possible afterward that was not possible before?
Prayer:
Dear God, I am still in awe of this life—this gift, this mystery, this wonder. Keep my eyes open, my heart soft, and my spirit ready to be changed. Amen.
