Beauty and Wonder

A new year’s invitation

Boise, Idaho ~ January 2025

Welcome, my friends, to 2025!

It seems incredible, but another year has passed and even now slips from our view as new days open their arms and beckon us forward with fresh hope. That is, to my mind, the best and brightest joy of new seasons—hope.

I’m not one for resolutions, but I do appreciate a new year as an invitation.

Words matter, don’t they?

Invitation is a word both gentle and kind—like a friendly hand extended, drawing me toward something full of goodness. Something ripe with promise (and not entirely dependent on me).

Resolution, on the other hand, feels heavy. Burdensome. It’s a word that, for me, obscures the light of hope since my own resoluteness has failed me more times than I care to convey.

I choose invitation.

In my last letter, I mentioned I’m reading Reclaiming Quiet by Sarah Clarkson. With certain books, I slow my reading to a snail-like pace. Some messages must be taken in slowly; they are words that must be savored and treasured and assimilated. They are not to be hurried. This is one of those titles. Consequently, I’m still reading Sarah’s words as I enter this new year, and in them I have found a timely invitation.

Throughout Sarah’s book, she integrates thoughts on beauty and attentiveness and their impact on her pilgrimage toward a quiet life. In one particular chapter, “The Color of Wonder,” she talks about the attentiveness children give to the world, and how it draws out their curiosity and joy. She also contemplates their inherent wonder and considers what we might learn from them about prayer:

“Children know. Sometimes I think the whole form of their little lives is a kind of prayer, and that’s what Jesus meant about becoming like a child in order to enter the kingdom. They watch intensely. They notice, and until they have voiced the full extent of their observations and had them validated, they are not to be swayed to another subject. They quest, and they thoroughly question the people they trust. They wonder. Sometimes, in our age of oversaturated opinion, it seems almost too commonplace a thing to say that children possess a capacity for fixed, receptive wonder that their adults have lost, but it’s true. It’s true.”

I’ve been thinking about this.

On a recent Sunday, I left for church ahead of my family as I was serving in a capacity that meant an early arrival. Our church is about a fifteen-minute drive from us on a weekend morning with the freeway being the most efficient trek. On this particular stretch of roadway, the freeway splits at one point; the main thoroughfare charges along the outskirts of the city and then toward Eastern Idaho and beyond. The other path heads north, taking one towards the mountains and downtown. Either way leads to our church, but the downtown route is slightly longer. It’s also distinctively more beautiful.

I always take the latter, even when running late.

Such was the case on this particular Sunday, but as I sped toward the gentle rolling foothills, the crystal snowcapped mountain peaks, and our humble, but lovely skyline—all bathed in pearly winter light, it seemed supremely important that I’d chosen this meandering way, despite the time absorption. Because just for a moment, I turned my attention toward beauty, and as beauty does, it drew my heart toward astonishment with God.

In Sarah’s chapter on wonder and prayer, she posits, “What if the life of prayer, the rootedness of quiet, was fueled not by discipline but by wonder?” My choice to take the long way to church just for a few momentary snatches of beauty (and the subsequent wonderment with God) gives me pause as I consider this question.

Another recent happening.

Each day before light breaks, I make my way downstairs and after collecting my Bible, journal, and a darkly brewed cup of coffee, I settle in our main living area. This blissful space is essentially a wall of windows that span our joint kitchen and living room and give view to our little half-acre yard brimming with trees. In the winter, when the branches are bare, I’m gifted with the sunrise from one of the corner windows.

One morning this past week, dark clouds descended and upended my daily greeting with the sun. The world still awoke, of course, but it was all shrouded in gray. Nonetheless, as I sat sipping my coffee, the clouds momentarily parted unveiling a crisp blue sky aflame with streaks of orange and fuchsia. It was magnificent. And it drew forth praise.

Mere seconds later, the curtain of gray resumed its place, and the glory of God’s display was concealed. Only a slight distraction, and I would have missed it.

Questions followed.

How many such moments do I miss amid my daily fuss and bustle? Amid my inattentiveness? And to what extent does that lack of attention fracture an organic, worshipful relationship with God?

Attention leads to beauty, and beauty ignites wonder. Wonder invokes worship, and as Sarah suggests, perhaps the best kind of prayer. It’s this invitation of hope that I sense the new year extending toward me: Attention. Beauty. Wonder. And a deepened walk with the Maker of it all.

What about you, friends? Are there hope-filled invitations beckoning you in 2025?

Perhaps this year, we step into their open arms.

Tiffany